I'm not a journalist. So I didn't down and let Assad charm me. I didn't walk away and say "my god he's got an Apple computer and he really likes Beyonce so he must be a liberal."

Wars are times of intense technological transformation, because societies invest - sometimes with extensive borrowing - when and where matters of life and death are at stake.

Conventional analysis suffers from a profound failure of imagination. It imagines passing clouds to be permanent and is blind to powerful, long-term shifts taking place in full view of the world.

I think there are worse things than war. For example, injustice.

Anger does not make history. Power does. And power may be supplemented by anger, but it derives from more fundamental realities; geography, demographics, technology, and culture.

What is American strategy first of all? So American strategy is to command the seas, right? The foundation of our power is sea control. Nobody can invade us, but we can invade them.

Well the most likely emerging countries are Japan, Turkey, and Poland. So I would say Eastern Europe, the Middle East and a maritime war by Japan with the United States enjoying its own pleasures.

A century is about events. A decade is about people.

Idealism is frequently another word for self-righteousness, a disease that can only be corrected by a profound understanding power in its complete sense.

The tragedy of the human condition is that the thing that makes us most human - community - originates in the inhumanity of war.

The poets think about war more than the social scientists.

Children, brought up naturally and in freedom, not only have imagination, but live in a world of imagination more real to them than our reality. ("Absolute Evil")

The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many for love.

I am tough, and sometimes I tell it like it is. Tough love can work wonders.

Humility is the embroidery of chiefs.

If you make happy those that are near, those that are far will come.

People derive the most satisfaction from doing the best they can.

The things you fear are undefeatable, not by their nature, but by your approach.

For from the error of not knowing, or understanding, what sin is, there necessarily arises another error, that people cannot know or understand what grace is.

Day is the Child of Time, And Day must cease to be: But Night is without a sire, And cannot expire, One with Eternity.

A coward dies a thousand times, a soldier dies but once.