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

Corrupt politicians make the other ten percent look bad.

Because complexity inhibits flexibility, early choices are especially crucial.

Americans have a tendency to believe that when there’s a problem there must be a solution.

Facts are rarely self-explanatory; their significance, analysis, and interpretation—at least in the foreign policy world—depend on context and relevance.

The reason that university politics is so vicious is because stakes are so small.

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

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

Behind the slogans lay an intellectual vacuum.

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

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

The nice thing about being a celebrity is that if you bore people they think it’s their fault.

Don’t be too ambitious. Do the most important thing you can think of doing every year and then your career will take care of itself.