...there is an optimal balance, depending on the manner of man's life, between the density of human population and the tolerances of nature. This balance, in the case of the United States would seem to me to have been surpassed when the American population reached, at a very maximum, two hundred million people, and perhaps a good deal less.

There is more respect to be won in the opinion of this world by a resolute and courageous liquidation of unsound positions than by the most stubborn pursuit of extravagant or unpromising objectives.

Instruments of coercion, once created, have a tendency to find their own natural masters.

World communism is like [a] malignant parasite which feeds on diseased tissue

A political society does not live to conduct foreign policy; it would be more correct to say that it conducts foreign policy in order to live.

Popular revolt against a ruthless, experienced modern dictatorship, which enjoys a monopoly over weapons and communications, ... is simply not a possibility in the modern age.

Like a graceful vase, a cat, even when motionless, seems to flow.