The American temptation is to believe that foreign policy is a subdivision of psychiatry.

Don't be too ambitious. Do the most important thing you can think of doing every year and then your career will take care of itself.

No, [the U.S.] has made it clear that we consider a peaceful resolution an essential aspect of American foreign policy. This I believe to be a situation understood by China, but again, it is important to not sound too truculent. Taking on a billion-plus Chinese is not an enterprise which one should enter lightly.

The American temptation is to believe that foreign policy is a subdivision of psychiatry.

In relations with many domestically weak countries, a radio transmitter can be a more effective form of pressure than a squadron B-52s.

A nation riven by factions, in which the minority has no hope of ever becoming a majority, or in which some group knows it is perpetually outcast, will seem oppressive to its members, whatever the legal pretensions.

A bluff taken seriously is more useful than a serious threat interpreted as a bluff.