Being frustrated is disagreeable, but the real disasters of life begin when you get what you want.

No modern nation has ever constructed a foreign policy that was acceptable to its intellectuals

You have to know one big thing and stick with it. The leaders who had one very big idea and one very big commitment. This permitted them to create something. Those are the ones who leave a legacy.

The really difficult moral issues arise, not from a confrontation of good and evil, but from a collision between two goods

A neoconservative is a liberal who's been mugged by reality. A neoliberal is a liberal who's been mugged by reality but has refused to press charges.

If you believe that no one was ever corrupted by a book, you have also to believe that no one was ever improved by a book.

Power breeds responsibilities, in international affairs as in domestic - or even private. To dodge or disclaim these responsibilities is one form of the abuse of power.