You approach the Mullahs as if they are normal people. They are not. You see them in your own image; you should not.

The Shah regarded politics as the province of demagoguery, an art in which only charlatans could excel. He had no time for what he saw as the tedious process of achieving consensus through debate and discussion and tried to justify his solitary exercise of power by insisting it was what Iran needed to catch up with lost time. He believed he was more patriotic than anyone else and needed no advice on how best to promote and protect the highest interests of the nation.

Today the name of America has a magic meaning for the most distant commmunities of the world.

Nixon is a strong leader with a good grasp of the world's problems. He knows that the only way to argue with the communists is from a position of strength.

Henry Kissinger is possessed of a truly superior intelligence, in addition to which he has two qualities which, unfortunately, many great men lack: he is able to listen and he has a very subtle sense of humour.

A crown, a throne could not be based on the not too very solid foundation of blood.

What's happened recently in Pakistan, India and Kuwait only goes to show that it's futile to imitate Western democracy. They've ended up exactly where they started.