Unfortunately for the Iraqi people, instead of meeting these requirements, for six years, Saddam Hussein has lied, delayed, obstructed and tried to deceive

I'm for democracy, but imposing democracy is an oxymoron. People have to choose democracy, and it has to come up from below.

Our strategic dialogue with China can both protect American interests and uphold our principles, provided we are honest about our differences on human rights and other issues and provided we use a mix of targeted incentives and sanctions to narrow these differences.

A skilled diplomat rarely generates extreme reactions.

In terms intellectually, [what] shaped my life was the whole Munich thing [the Munich Agreement] that I knew about all my life, in terms of how large powers make decisions that affect small countries, and the unintended consequences of that. The other part is I knew about the Holocaust. l just didn't know that it applied to my family. But that did affect the way I thought about what I was seeing as ethnic cleansing in the Balkans; there's no question about that.

In diplomacy, clear-cut wins and losses are rare.

Often if you don't speak up, whatever you thought was stupid to say some man would say and then everyone would say 'as he said'.