America's civilian institutions of diplomacy and development have been chronically undermanned and underfunded for far too long.

What I know concerns me. What I don't know concerns me even more. What people aren't telling me worries me the most.

I'm a big advocate of drones.

No policy has proved more successful in making friends for the United States, during the cold war and since, than educating students from abroad at our colleges and universities.

I have tried to maintain civil relationships with everyone I meet - and, even if I violently disagree with them, try to be respectful.

A wild and crazy weekend involves sitting on the front porch, smoking a cigar, reading a book.

I've been very sensitive for a long time to the repeated pattern, during economic hard times or after a war, of the United States' essentially unilaterally disarming.

Even when I was at CIA, I'd go to visit foreign leaders and I'd say, 'You know, I'm not a diplomat. I'm just an old CIA guy'... I said, 'If I wanted to be diplomatic, I'd have been a diplomat.'

One of my favorite little sayings is, 'To avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.

Future U.S. political leaders – those for whom the Cold War was not the formative experience that it was for me – may not consider the return on America’s investment in NATO worth the cost.

I think that Iran with a nuclear weapon is extremely destabilizing. I think it could precipitate a nuclear arms race in the region.

But worries are for people who can’t pull grown men apart with their bare hands.

Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.

Attribute to God every good that you have received. If you take credit for something that does not belong to you, you will be guilty of theft.

I'm inviting the spirits into my photography. It's an act of God.

Life is what comes along after you have planned something else.

Givers of great dinners know few enemies.

Any anti-bullying scheme, initiative or policy which fails to mention accountability for the bullies is likely to meet with little, and often no, success

Don't ever speak publicly about anything that you're not passionate about and that you don't actually believe you have something truly unique about it to deliver.

Our epoch is a time of tragic collision between matter and spirit and of the downfall of the purely material world view.

Stern Winter loves a dirge-like sound.