I believe that there is a whole set of issues in the world - environment, proliferation, energy, cyberspace - that can only be dealt with on a global basis. The traditional patterns of national rivalry and national competition are not suitable for those cases.

High office teaches decision making, not substance. It consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it. Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered; they learn how to make decisions but not what decisions to make.

Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed.

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

The art of good foreign policy is to understand and to take into consideration the values of a society, to realize them at the outer limit of the possible.

It is, after all, the responsibility of the expert to operate the familiar and that of the leader to transcend it.

The statesman's duty is to bridge the gap between his nation's experience and his vision.