Moderation is a virtue only in those who are thought to have an alternative.

Now we have a whole series of problems - energy, environment, proliferation - which go beyond the nation. And we also know that a conflict between major powers would be a catastrophe for which there is no compensation in anything you can gain.

Revolutionaries are rarely motivated primarily by material considerations-though the illusion that they are persists in the West.

Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.

The nice thing about being a celebrity is that, if you bore people, they think it's their fault.

It is always easy to divide the world into idealists and power-oriented people. The idealists are presumed to be the noble people, and the power-oriented people are the ones that cause all the world's trouble.

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.