It's a necessary quality of a diplomat or a politician that he will compromise. Uncompromising politicians or diplomats get you into the most terrible trouble.

Even a pacifist should admire the military virtues.

The written history of the world is largely a history of warfare, because the states within which we live came into existence largely through conquest, civil strife, or struggles for independence.

Nobody should teach anywhere for 25 years, but I did.

We saw the children and the women with their babies and then I heard the poouff — the flame had broken through the thatched roof and there was a yellow- brown smoke column going up into the air. It didn't hit me all that much then, but when I think of it now — I slaughtered those people. I murdered them.

There are certain wicked people in the world that you can't deal with except by force

I think Americans like the practical; they like the human. And I like both those things myself, and I try and put them into my books.