Idealism is frequently another word for self-righteousness, a disease that can only be corrected by a profound understanding power in its complete sense.

Constraint theory defines for you what outcomes are possible and what outcomes are impossible. It also eliminates wishful thinking.

Constraint theory asks: What is the price for doing this? Now one way around constraint theory is declaring your enemy crazy. Crazy and stupid are not concepts used in forecasting. When people say they're really stupid or they're crazy, that's laziness. That means I don't want to think through their position or about what they're really going to do.

The poets think about war more than the social scientists.

What is American strategy first of all? So American strategy is to command the seas, right? The foundation of our power is sea control. Nobody can invade us, but we can invade them.

The tragedy of the human condition is that the thing that makes us most human - community - originates in the inhumanity of war.

In a way, we can have a much easier discussion about the future of technology than we can about why a young man kills another man in a war.