Our nation is uniquely endowed to play a creative and decisive role in the new order which is taking form around us.

Many of the scientists have believed that their contribution to ending the nuclear race is not to let any new weapons to be developed.

I don't know what happens in the next years. But I cannot now design a policy in which we try to keep China from developing, because in some years, if they develop, they might be rich enough to challenge us, and adopt the principle that we will hold down any state that might in the future become strong. That would make us a world empire for which we wouldn't have the talents or the convictions.

I believe that without Watergate we would have had an extraordinary period of success with a strong Nixon and a still vital Brezhnev in power.

You become a superpower by being strong but also by being wise and by being farsighted. But no state is strong or wise enough to create a world order alone.

Where position is felt to be a birthright, generosity is possible (though not guaranteed); flexibility is not inhibited by a commitment to perpetual success.

I do not know what will happen in China politically. I do know that it is impossible to maintain the communist system or probably even a strict one-party system when the economy becomes so pluralistic. Now, what form that takes and what institutions will evolve, I do not have a clear view about. I do not think the United States, as a general principle, ought to intervene in this.