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.

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

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

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

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

The United States cannot reshape other countries in its own image and that, with a few exceptions, its efforts to police the world are neither in its interests nor within the scope of its resources. This whole tendency to see ourselves as the center of political enlightenment and as teachers to a great part of the rest of the world strikes me as unthought-through, vainglorious and undesirable.

The truth is sometimes a poor competitor in the market place of ideas – complicated, unsatisfying, full of dilemmas, always vulnerable to misinterpretation and abuse.