People are generally amazed that I would take an interest in any form that would require me to stop talking for three hours.

Leaders are responsible not for running public opinion polls but for the consequences of their actions.

Statesmen think in terms of history and view society as an organism. Prophets are different since they believe absolute aims can be achieved in the foreseeable future. More people have been killed by crusaders than by statesmen.

Well, I don't know whether it caused anguish in China, but it was not a wise way to proceed. But one has to remember that it was the first experience. And in a Republican administration, there is a conservative wing that looks at China as the last embodiment of communism, which therefore tends towards a more bellicose rhetoric anyway than I would. It's not the dominant element, but every once in a while they get a crack at public statement.

Certainly not a party of the workers and the peasants. In fact, Jiang Zemin in recent weeks has officially said that capitalists and the entrepreneurs should be enrolled in the Communist Party.

The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been. The public does not fully understand the world into which it is going. Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision. Those leaders who do not are ultimately judged failures, even though they may be popular at the moment.

If you do not know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere