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

As countries grapple with modernization, people who are left behind tend to hold firmer and firmer to their view of the evil of modernity.

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

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

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.

I think history is continuous. It doesn't begin or end on Pearl Harbor Day or the day Lyndon Johnson withdraws from the presidency or on 9/11. You have to learn from the past but not be imprisoned by it. You need to take counsel of history but never be imprisoned by it.

There is a split between Muslims who want to practice their faith in peace and tolerance with other religions and other people, and these extreme, radical fundamentalists who have shown a total lack of tolerance for people with different views, starting with people who they don't think are good Muslims, and going on to include Christians and Jews.