“For Roosevelt, if a nation was unable or unwilling to act to defend its own interests, it could not expect others to respect them. Inevitably,”

A more immediate issue concerns North Korea, to which Bismarck’s nineteenth-century aphorism surely applies: We live in a wondrous time, in which the strong is weak because of his scruples and the weak grows strong because of his audacity.

If history teaches anything it is that there can be no peace without equilibrium and no justice without restraint.

Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.

In the end, peace can be achieved only by hegemony or by balance of power.

Yet freedom cannot be secured or sustained without a framework of order to keep the peace.

It has the added advantage of being true.

Power without legitimacy tempts tests of strength; legitimacy without power tempts empty posturing.

Every victory is only the price of admission to a more difficult problem

A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone.

Chinese thinkers developed strategic thought that placed a premium on victory through psychological advantage and preached the avoidance of direct conflict.

The state is a fragile organization, and the statesman does not have the moral right to risk its survival on ethical restraint.

Self-governed nations do not fill their neighbor states with spies.

For the balance of power is never static; its components are in constant flux.

America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests

Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God

History is the memory of States.

You’ve got to expect things are going to go wrong. And we always need to prepare ourselves for handling the unexpected.

If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.

House of Balloons’ was special because I had no deadlines, and nobody knew me, so there were no expectations.

To those who are given much, much is expected.

The greatest loss of time is delay and expectation, which depend upon the future.

If you accept the expectations of others, especially negative ones, then you never will change the outcome.

Things we lose have a way of coming back to us in the end, if not always in the way we expect.

To succeed in life and achieve results, you must understand and master three mighty forces – desire, belief, and expectation.