You really struggle to be a successful empire if you are also the world's biggest debtor.

I refuse to accept that Western civilization is like some hopeless old version of Microsoft DOS, doomed to freeze, then crash. I still cling to the hope that the United States is the Mac to Europe's PC, and that if one part of the West can successfully update and reboot itself, it's America.

Oral history is a recipe for complete misrepresentation because almost no one tells the truth, even when they intend to.

A historian is battling all the time to remember as much as possible.

My arguments for liberal empire or whatever you want to call it - hegemony, primacy, you name it - are really activated by a sense that the alternatives involve more violence, more repression, more hardship.

Why did the Germans and Japanese keep fighting after 1943 when every rational hope of victory had disappeared?

American Empire- it is an empire that lacks the drive to export its capital, its people and its culture to those backward regions which need them most urgently and which, if they are neglected, will breed the greatest threats to its security. It is an empire, in short, that dare not speak its name. It is an empire in denial.