I know exactly how and where I am going to die. The only question is when.

If words fall into disrepair, what will substitute? They are all we have

Above all, the thrall in which an ideology holds a people is best measured by their collective inability to imagine alternatives.

I can still boss people around. I can still write. I can still read. I can still eat, and I can still have very strong views.

The Second World War had a precipitating effect in that it discredited the empires, as well as bankrupting them. Not only could you no longer, if you were a colonial subject of France in Africa, look to France as a model of power and influence and civility after what had happened in the war. Nor could the French any longer afford to run their empire. And nor could the British, although they were not discredited in the way that the French were.

We have responsibilities for others, not just across space but across time. We have responsibilities to people who came before us. They left us a world of institutions, ideas or possibilities for which we, in turn, owe them something. One of the things we owe them is not to squander them.

I don't believe that one should have one-size-fits-all moral rules for international political action.