In diplomacy, as in life itself, one often learns more from failures than from successes. Triumphs will seem, in retrospect, to be foreordained, a series of brilliant actions and decisions that may in fact have been lucky or inadvertent, whereas failures illuminate paths and pitfalls to be avoided.

Know something about something. Don’t just present your wonderful self to the world. Constantly amass knowledge and offer it around.

MEMRI allows an audience far beyond the Arabic-speaking world to observe the wide variety of Arab voices speaking through the media, schoolbooks, and pulpits to their own people. What one hears is often astonishing, sometimes frightening, and always important. Most importantly, it includes the newly-emerging liberal voices of reform and hope, as well as disturbing echoes of ancient hatreds. Without the valuable research of MEMRI, the non-Arabic speaking world would not have this indispensable window.

United Nations peacekeepers are going all over the world spreading AIDS even while they're trying to bring peace. What a supreme irony.

Nothing generates more heat in the government than the question of who is chosen to participate in important meetings.

The World War II generation believed the United States could do anything - anything... And Vietnam was a shattering experience for everyone.

It's an improvisation on a theme. You know where you want to go, but you don't know how to get there. It's not linear.