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

The controlled chaos is one way to get creativity. The intensity of it, the physical rush, the intimacy created the kind of dialogue that leads to synergy...

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

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

Bureaucracies have a natural tendency not to cooperate, coordinate or consolidate with each other. They won't cooperate with each other - unless they are forced to do so by political level authority.

Diplomacy is like jazz: endless variations on a theme.

World War I was not inevitable, as many historians say. It could have been avoided, and it was a diplomatically botched negotiation.

A world without the United Nations or with a paralyzed United Nations would be far more costly to all of us and far more dangerous to peace and stability.

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.

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

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.

these "sometimey" feelings are welcomed to stay... reminiscent of ying and yang: they need eachother to help me get through the good & bad days

I kept running until someone saw the chase and hid me inside their house.

I'm an amazing mama's boy.

I cannot be an optimist but I am a prisoner of hope.

It never does much good to find out why you can't; put your effort into what you can do.

A technological advance of a major sort almost always is overestimated in the short run for its consequences - and underestimated in the long run.

Compared to how I have raced before and how I have competed, the success that I have had, this does look like doom compared to it.

I would say my sense of adventure outweighs my grace.

I do not know what to do, my mind's in two.

I know I probably should be sad about my mother's cancer... but she still hasn't seen The Last Kiss, you know?