“The art of crisis management is to raise the stakes to where the adversary will not follow, but in a manner that avoids a tit for tat.”

Later I learned to improve my forecasting—if necessary by asking the visitor in advance what subjects he intended to raise with Nixon.

Behind the slogans lay an intellectual vacuum.

order without freedom, even if sustained by momentary exaltation, eventually creates its own counterpoise; yet freedom cannot be secured or sustained without a framework of order to keep the peace.

There can’t be a crisis next week, my schedule is already full.

The goal of the tribute system was to foster deference, not to extract economic benefit or to dominate foreign societies militarily.

A country whose security depends on producing a genius in each generation sets itself a task no society has ever met.

Who controls the money controls the world.

History knows no resting places and no plateaus

Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.

It is not often that nations learn from the past, even rarer that they draw the correct conclusions from it.

Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.

The mindset for walking lonely political paths may not be self-evident to those who seek confirmation by hundreds, sometimes thousands of friends on Facebook.

Empires have no interest in operating within an international system; they aspire to be the international system.

A turbulent history has taught Chinese leaders that not every problem has a solution and that too great an emphasis on total mastery over specific events could upset the harmony of the universe.

Because complexity inhibits flexibility, early choices are especially crucial.

Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire.

We took away your art because we thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all.

Charm is the great English blight. It does not exist outside these damp islands. It spots and kills anything it touches. It kills love; it kills art; I greatly fear, my dear Charles, it has killed you.

Sunlight is painting.

Giving comfort under affliction requires that penetration into the human mind, joined to that experience which knows how to soothe, how to reason, and how to ridicule; taking the utmost care never to apply those arts improperly.

History repeats itself, but the special call of an art which has passed away is never reproduced. It is as utterly gone out of the world as the song of a destroyed wild bird.

In the waking dreams our societies permit, in our myths, our arts, our songs, we celebrate the nonbelongers, the different ones, the outlaws, the freaks.

It is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self knowledge.