Well it did not make excessive sense to say that 20 million people are the recognized government of a billion people that have their own institutions. We did not change it in the sense that we said this has to end, but there was a U.N. vote that transferred the legitimacy of China from Taiwan to Beijing. Beijing was recognized as the government of all of China. Then, under President Carter, we followed what the U.N. had already done eight years earlier.

The idea of abstract power only exists for academics, not in real life.

It is an act of insanity and national humiliation to have a law prohibiting the President from ordering assassination.

We cannot always assure the future of our friends; we have a better chance of assuring our future if we remember who our friends are.

Deng Xiaoping thought of himself as a great revolutionary and a great reformer. He had dismantled the Chinese communist management of the economy. In my next-to-last conversation with him, which was about six months before Tiananmen Square, he said to me that his aim would be the next phase to reduce the Communist Party to philosophical issues. And I said, "What's a philosophical issue?" And he said, "Well, like if we make an alliance with Russia." Given his view of Russia, that was not the likeliest thing that would ever happen.

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

Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people.