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.

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.

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.

No president is well-served by groupthink or by everybody singing from the same sheet of music they think he's on.

Is that your cheap way of telling me you want to kiss

What I've realized over the years is that I have some pretty good friends.

Usually, the fairy tale ends with the girl marrying the prince. But mine started as soon as the marriage was over.

I understand, and not knowing how to express myself without pagan words, I’d rather remain silent

The jazz band's chief stimulus, of course, was the rise of the negro 'blues' and their exploitation by the negro song-writer, W. C. Handy.

It's a cliche that the Senate is broken, and like most cliches, it's true.

I think the level of devotion some sci-fi fans display turns other people off.

To adore the conqueror, who now beholds Cherub and seraph rolling in the flood.

It is cruel to discover one's mediocrity only when it is too late. It does not improve the temper.

Most of the cruelty in the world is just misplaced energy.