The main difference between the Prague Spring and the Velvet Revolution was that the former was mostly the work of Communist party members and others who wanted to bring about 'socialism with a human face.'

I think you can be an enemy of Saddam Hussein even if Donald Rumsfeld is also an enemy of Saddam Hussein.

We still have politicians who strive for a different type of country: Kaczynski as well as Orbán in Hungary. They want a gradual coup. If Orbán stayed in power in Hungary or if Kaczynski were to win an election in our country, it would be dangerous. Both men have an authoritarian idea of government; democracy is merely a façade.

If you're powerful, you are much more likely to be blind and deaf to signals from outside.

I think it's always dangerous to make political arguments in a religiously ideological way. And it's very dangerous to treat as traitors to the American nation those who think differently.

After the fall of communism in Poland, we had a post-communist as president for two terms: Aleksander Kwasniewski. He was very good. He brought Poland into NATO and the European Union. The call to finally clean house is a propaganda tool of the right, which tolerates the leftists who it condemns. Kaczynski appointed a judge to the position of deputy justice minister who had once sentenced current President Bronislaw Komorowski to a prison term.

Politics and ethics belong to different worlds.