“For nations, history plays the role that character confers on human beings.”

In his essay, ‘Perpetual Peace,’ the philosopher, Immanuel Kant, argued that perpetual peace would eventually come to the world in one of two ways, by human insight or by conflicts and catastrophes of a magnitude that left humanity no other choice. We are at such a juncture.

Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There is too much fraternizing with the enemy.

When statesmen want to gain time, they offer to talk.

Corrupt politicians make the other ten percent look bad.

Can governmental orders be invented from scratch by intelligent thinkers, or is the range of choice limited by underlying organic and cultural realities (the Burkean view)?

What distinguishes Sun Tzu from Western writers on strategy is the emphasis on the psychological and political elements over the purely military.

A Harvard study has shown that in fifteen cases in history where a rising and an established power interacted, ten ended in war.

George Bernard Shaw: There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.

Order always requires a subtle balance of restraint, force, and legitimacy.

A country that demands moral perfection in its foreign policy will achieve neither perfection nor security

Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.

It is one of history’s ironies that Communism, advertised as a classless society, tended to breed a privileged class of feudal proportions.

If chess is about the decisive battle, wei qi is about the protracted campaign. The chess player aims for total victory. The wei qi player seeks relative advantage.

Politicians are like dogs, Their life expectancy is too short for a commitment to be bearable

in international affairs a reputation for reliability is a more important asset than demonstrations of tactical cleverness.

Writing for children is murder. A chapter has to be boiled down to a paragraph. Every word has to count.

We should begin at the very root from which we spring, we should effect a radical reform in the character of the food.

I realize everybody wants what they don’t have. But at the end of the day, what you have inside is much more beautiful than what’s on the outside!

A coward judges all he sees by what he is.

A man must stand erect, not be kept erect by others.

You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

I usually dont like to spoon feed my audience, because I grew up idolizing story tellers who tell stories using symbolism, so it was in my nature to do the same.

Imagine for yourself a character, a model personality, whose example you determine to follow, in private as well as in public.