The East European small countries have a sense of betrayal, of having been forgotten by Western leaders.

I don't much mind being expelled from communities.

The American financial and military commitment really only kicks in with Korea. Not that Korea was the real game for the Americans; their real fear was that this was just the prelude to a second Korea in Germany. We now know from the Soviet archives that the last thing Stalin was going to do was start a war in Central Europe. The Americans didn't know that, and it was the fear that he might which transformed NATO from a sort of shell game into a real military alliance. That total commitment basically transformed the Marshal Plan into military aid.

Apparently, the line you take on Israel trumps everything else in life.

The pleasures of mental agility are much overstated, inevitably - as it now appears to me - by those not exclusively dependent upon them.

All modern U.S. presidents are perforce politicians, prisoners of their past pronouncements, their party, their constituency, and their colleagues.

Unlike memory, which confirms and reinforces itself, history contributes to the disenchantment of the world.