The reason prophets are so rarely honored in their own country is that their role is to transcend the limits of their contemporaries' experience and imagination. They achieve recognition only when their vision has been turned into experience - in short, when it is too late to benefit from their foresight.

You're 18 points down [in the polls]... You might as well do what's right.

I've often said that the desire to lecture China on how it should behave in the world is wrong. China was around for thousands of years even before America existed. It could even be that China's growing power will allow itself to be slowed down. But as long as this immense empire doesn't fall apart, it will become an important factor in global politics.

The Russian people, at least the ones I know, have pride in being a Russian. And, therefore, they want to be taken seriously in international affairs.

Even paranoid people have enemies.

I do not criticize people who take a public stand on human rights issues. I express my respect for them. But some people are more influential without a public confrontation.

Becoming conscious is of course a sacrilege against nature; it is as though you had robbed the unconscious of something. The nice thing about being a celebrity is that if you bore people they think it's their fault.