If intelligence were a television set, it would be an early black-and-white model with poor reception, so that much of the picture was gray and the figures on the screen were snowy and indistinct. You could fiddle with the knobs all you wanted, but unless you were careful, what you would see often depended more on what you expected or hoped to see than on what was really there.

What's the point of having this superb military you're always talking about if we can't use it?

No matter how hard we might wish, we will not be able to transform China's behavior overnight.

The difference between humans and other mammals is that we know how to accessorize.

I went to a girls high school and I went to a women's college and when I first started teaching at Georgetown it had been a single sex school and so they wanted to have some women professors when they went co-ed, and so I originally was hired to start a program there, and really encourage women to go into foreign policy. I always have done that, and I really do think that things are better when women are involved.

There are a lot of similar aspects in all the religions. The question is which side of it you hold up.

I don't think people should think of women's issues as auxiliary issues - they are central.