I think if you're going to master policy, especially world affairs, you've got to know history.

Clashes of values and the struggle for primacy constitute a constant in human history that accounts for that other constant - conflict and war.

Doves oppose war on the grounds that the risks exceed the gains. War with Iraq could be very costly, possibly degenerating into urban warfare.

Now this is a way to approach our healthcare problems: increase the number of tax collectors and decrease the number of doctors - brilliant!

I don't think you can pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere indefinitely and not have a reaction. But there are great scientists such as Freeman Dyson, one of the greatest physicists of the last hundred years, who has studied the question, who believes quite the opposite. The reason transnational action is so difficult is because the major problem with climate change is, A, that there is no consensus, and, B, that the economic cost is simply staggering. Reversing it completely might mean undoing the modern industrial economy.

The joy of losing consists in this: Where there are no expectations, there is no disappointment.

The indecisiveness and ambivalence so devastatingly described by both of Obama's previous secretaries of defense, Leon Panetta and Bob Gates, are already beginning to characterize the Syria campaign.