Create the impression of endless willingness to compromise and you almost invite deadlines. That's the challenge we now have in North Korea and have had in North Korea for 10 years. In this sense, diplomacy and foreign policy and other elements of political activity have to be closely linked and have to be understood by the negotiators

People think responsibility is hard to bear. It's not. I think that sometimes it is the absence of responsibility that is harder to bear. You have a great feeling of impotence.

A country that demands moral perfection in its foreign policy will achieve neither perfection nor security.

In the 1960s, I would have considered China with its CPC an ideologically more dynamic country than the Soviet Union. But the Soviet Union was strategically more threatening.

Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.

Before the Freedom of Information Act, I used to say at meetings "The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer." [...] But since the Freedom of Information Act, I'm afraid to say things like that.

The statesman's duty is to bridge the gap between his nation's experience and his vision.