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.

Anyone who has ever studied the history of American diplomacy, especially military diplomacy, knows that you might start in a war with certain things on your mind as a purpose of what you are doing, but in the end, you found yourself fighting for entirely different things that you had never thought of before. In other words, war has a momentum of its own and it carries you away from all thoughtful intentions when you get into it. Today, if we went into Iraq, like the president would like us to do, you know where you begin. You never know where you are going to end.

The best thing we can do if we want the Russians to let us be Americans is to let the Russians be Russian.

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

A foreign policy aimed at the achievement of total security is the one thing I can think of that is entirely capable of bringing this country to a point where it will have no security at all.

The United States should not jump around like an elephant frightened by a mouse.

The Red Army... swept the native population clean in a manner that has no parallel since the days of the Asiatic hordes.