Politics is compromise.

In the modern age where everything is connected to everything, the most important thing about what you can do is what you can do with others.

The generous way of putting it is that we were not ready for this. The less generous way is to say: How was it possible to return to the politics of appeasement of the 1930s?

The greatest failure is that although we have created institutions, we have not created a civil society.

Truth and reconciliation' are always combined, but I would split them: I don't think Bosnia is ready for reconciliation, but I do think it is ready for truth.

The advent of interconnectedness and of weapons of mass destruction means that, increasingly, I share a destiny with my enemy.

There can be no place in a 21st-century parliament for people with 15th-century titles upholding 19th-century prejudices.

I've had much nastier things said about me in the British press than in the Bosnian press.

I can create institutions, but I can't rewrite the chips in people's heads.

The United States will remain the most powerful nation on Earth for the next 10, 15 years, but the context in which she holds her power has now radically altered.

I am formally accountable to the steering board of the PIC, and I meet with nine ambassadors from the PIC every week. I have to have the capitals' broad agreement with what I do.

Part of the trick of being happy is a refusal to allow oneself to become too nostalgic for the heady triumphs of one's youth.

And allow me again to assure you that when you've got yourself going, doing your True Will, you won't find you have any time to get bored.

The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.

Too much I've seen, and felt, and lov'd in life, Living I come to seek Lethaean calm; Let me, fair scenes! forget all worldly strife, Oblivion solely is my bosom's balm.

If I told you all the people that have secretly told me I've influenced them, you'd never believe it, and you'll never see it in print, either.

I have always been honest about my recollection of events.

History can be a weapon, and it can be used against you.

It takes truth, and it takes speaking truth to power, but because the stranglehold is so tight it seems to take something else - a real political threat.

The best genius is that which absorbs and assimilates everything without doing the least violence to its fundamental destiny.

He's famous for being obsessive about details.