University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.

America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.

In the current [Carter] administration, who can use the White House swimming pool and tennis courts is decided at the very highest level. President Ford did not bother himself with such minor details. He let me swim in the pool. He only got upset when I tried to walk across the water.

It is, after all, the responsibility of the expert to operate the familiar and that of the leader to transcend it.

Everybody who has dealt with China over an extended period of time has come to more or less the same conclusions. There are nuances of differences, but not fundamental differences. I think that President Bush was heading in this direction, and I have no doubt that he will again wind up in this position. But right now he has to be preoccupied with the atrocity committed in New York and Washington.

Peace depends ultimately not on political arrangements but on the conscience of mankind.

The elderly are useless eaters.