The Vietnam War required us to emphasize the national interest rather than abstract principles. What President Nixon and I tried to do was unnatural. And that is why we didn't make it.
No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time.
No foreign policy - no matter how ingenious - has any chance of success if it is born in the minds of a few and carried in the hearts of none.
Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.
University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.
Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.
You can't make war in the Middle East without Egypt and you can't make peace without Syria.
It is, after all, the responsibility of the expert to operate the familiar and that of the leader to transcend it.
The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.
Most foreign policies that history has marked highly, in whatever country, have been originated by leaders who were opposed by experts.
It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise.
Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision.
Power is the great aphrodisiac.
Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.
We cannot always assure the future of our friends we have a better chance of assuring our future if we remember who our friends are.
Moderation is a virtue only in those who are thought to have an alternative.
There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
The statesman's duty is to bridge the gap between his nation's experience and his vision.
A leader who confines his role to his people's experience dooms himself to stagnation a leader who outstrips his people's experience runs the risk of not being understood.
Diplomacy: the art of restraining power.