Tutelage is a comfortable relationship for the senior partner, but it is demoralizing in the long run. It breeds illusions of omniscience on one side and attitudes of impotent irresponsibility on the other.

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

I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.

If a Chinese plane landed at Los Angeles Airport having just bought down an American military plane, he wouldn't be permitted to leave the next day. So then we developed a framework which should have been acceptable as a concept to the Chinese, namely to express regret for the loss of life and maintain our position that we had a right to fly these missions.

Left to its own devices, the State Department machinery tends toward inertia rather than creativity; it is always on the verge of turning itself into an enormous cable machine.

I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.

I don't have a brief for every single reaction of Israel, but I think it is important that the political negotiations occur free of the threat of terrorism.