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

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.

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.

If a country denies it has AIDS, that country will inevitably become an even greater victim.

I still believe in the possibility of the United States, with all its will and all its strength, and I don't just mean military, persevering against any challenge. I still believe in that.

Diplomacy is like jazz: endless variations on a theme.

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