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

Diplomacy is like jazz: endless variations on a theme.

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.

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.

A peace deal requires agreements, and you don't make agreements with your friends, you make agreements with your enemies.

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