A country that demands moral perfection in its foreign policy will achieve neither perfection nor security.

Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.

I would say the special experience of American wartime policy in the last 40 years, from Vietnam on, is that the war itself became controversial in the country and that the most important thing we need in the current situation is, whatever disagreements there may be on tactics, that the legitimacy of the war itself does not become a subject of controversy. We have to start with the assumption, obviously, that whatever administration is conducting a war wants to end it.

People think responsibility is hard to bear. It's not. I think that sometimes it is the absence of responsibility that is harder to bear. You have a great feeling of impotence.

Well, he keeps saying that, and as defense secretary, of course he has to think of a lot of potential enemies. I do not think it's a wise course to articulate this or to base our policy on it. And I do not see under modern circumstances what we would be fighting about.

It is frankly a mistake of amateurs to believe you can gain the upper hand in a diplomatic negotiation.

Oil is much too important a commodity to be left in the hands of the Arabs.