The Red Army... swept the native population clean in a manner that has no parallel since the days of the Asiatic hordes.

It is clear that the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.

Heroism is endurance for one moment more.

World communism is like [a] malignant parasite which feeds on diseased tissue

The nuclear bomb is the most useless weapon ever invented. It can be employed to no rational purpose. It is not even an effective defense against itself.

Instruments of coercion, once created, have a tendency to find their own natural masters.

There is more respect to be won in the opinion of this world by a resolute and courageous liquidation of unsound positions than by the most stubborn pursuit of extravagant or unpromising objectives.

The United States should not jump around like an elephant frightened by a mouse.

A political society does not live to conduct foreign policy; it would be more correct to say that it conducts foreign policy in order to live.

War is a highly overrated tool of foreign policy.

The Russian leaders are keen judges of human psychology, and as such they are highly conscious that loss of temper and of self-control is never a source of strength in political affairs.

This is pity, ” he thought, and then he lifted his head in wonder. He thought that there must be something terribly wrong with a world in which this monstrous feeling is called a virtue.

Does a poet create, originate, initiate the thing called a poem, or is his behavior merely the product of his genetic and environmental histories?

Entertainment is the greatest socializing force in the world.

You know why I'm pulling your leg? Because I can't touch it from where I am.

God sometimes does His work with gentle drizzle, not storms.

It is by no means certain that we advance our philosophical quest by reading Plato or Aristotle. It may increase our knowledge of history but not of the world.

It's easy, after all, not to be a writer. Most people aren't writers, and very little harm comes to them.

Freedom, where are you? Who holds you back? [...] The mother of wit and pleasure, Oh freedom!

to move the wheels of justice is a ponderous business.

It's the flock, the grove, that matters. Our responsibility is to species, not to specimens; to communities, not to individuals.