We must learn to distinguish morality from moralizing.

It is an act of insanity and national humiliation to have a law prohibiting the President from ordering assassination.

One theory is that we will make war look so attractive that we undermine the deterrent. That's Never Never Land. What we have now would have been enough to deter Hitler. But we are talking in a different order of reality.

One of the hardest things for the president is to distinguish the routine issues that come through from the essential issues that affect the long term, and not to let himself get sucked into the battles of the bureaucracy for marginal issues, and to keep them focused and to keep his mind clear on what the fundamental things are that he has to accomplish.

In Asia, the nation state still is extremely vital, and of course, then in Africa, a whole new pattern is emerging because the states in Africa reflected the preferences of the colonial powers when they were established.

Americans believe that you can alter people by conversion, and that everybody in the world is a potential American. The Chinese also believe that their values are universal, but they do not believe that you can convert to becoming a Chinese unless you are born into it.

I knew Deng Xiaoping when he came out of prison. He had, after all, been imprisoned for nearly ten years by Mao. I know what China looked like before he took over, and so in my own mind, I don't think of Deng Xiaoping as an oppressor. I think of somebody who, faced with that crisis, made a very painful and decision with which I cannot agree. But I also think of him as a great reformer.