Strong prejudices in an ill-formed mind are hazardous to government, and when combined with a position of power even more so.

One must stop conducting research before one has finished. Otherwise, one will never stop and never finish.

I have always felt like an artist when I work on a book. I see no reason why the word should always be confined to writers of fiction and poetry.

In a country where misery and want were the foundation of the social structure, famine was periodic, death from starvation common, disease pervasive, thievery normal, and graft and corruption taken for granted, the elimination of these conditions in Communist China is so striking that negative aspects of the new rule fade in relative importance.

Policy is formed by preconceptions, by long implanted biases. When information is relayed to policy-makers, they respond in terms of what is already inside their heads and consequently make policy less to fit the facts than to fit the notions and intentions formed out of the mental baggage that has accumulated in their minds since childhood.

For belligerent purposes, the 14th century, like the 20th, commanded a technology more sophisticated than the mental and moral capacity that guided its use.

The appetite for power is old and irrepressible in humankind, and in its action almost always destructive.