No nation should stoke instability in its neighbor’s country.

Foreign policy is like human relations, only people know less about each other.

I don’t know a country in the world that doesn’t have borders and doesn’t want to know who is coming into their country.

I have seen how the foundations of the world are laid, and I have not the least doubt that it will stand a good while.

We lost the American colonies because we lacked the statesmanship to know the right time and the manner of yielding what is impossible to keep.

As strong as the United States is, we can’t deal with terrorism alone.

As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I know that the men and women of our intelligence community put their lives on the line every day, and they do very dangerous work to keep our country safe.

I am concerned for the security of our great Nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within.

The U.S. – the idea that the U.S. has introduced and imposed principles of international law, that’s hardly even a joke. The United States has even gone so far as to veto Security Council resolutions calling on all states to observe international law. That was in the 1980s under Reagan.

I would heartily welcome the union of East and West provided it is not based on brute force.

With all the… success that I’ve been lucky enough to get? That doesn’t happen unless the home life is solid.

Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct. Even the ardent love of liberty will, after a time, give way to its dictates.

When Nirvana became popular, you could very easily slip and get lost during that storm. I fortunately had really heavy anchors – old friends, family.

We have practiced diplomacy since the very beginning of the nation. Sometimes it has not worked, and we’ve had to go to war. I always believe you should try to find peace and reconciliation before conflict. That has been the approach I’ve taken.

Diplomacy: the art of restraining power.

I can easily imagine Obama sitting down and talking to any leader – or any person – in the world, with no baggage of past servitude or race supremacy to mar their talks.

Free nations are peaceful nations. Free nations don’t attack each other. Free nations don’t develop weapons of mass destruction.

Clinton himself acted in ways which increased the threat of terror.

Saddam’s goal is to achieve the lifting of U.N. sanctions while retaining and enhancing Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs. We cannot, we must not and we will not let him succeed.

If the United Nations once admits that international disputes can be settled by using force, then we will have destroyed the foundation of the organization and our best hope of establishing a world order.

Now if there is one thing that we do worse than any other nation, it is try and manage somebody else’s affairs.

Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.

War is what happens when language fails.

More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginning of all wars – yes, an end to this brutal, inhuman and thoroughly impractical method of settling the differences between governments.

Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy.

America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.

It is true that the king has made a truce with the duke of Burgundy for fifteen days and that the duke is to turn over the city of Paris at the end of fifteen days. Yet you should not marvel if I do not enter that city so quickly.

I have spoken to Chinese leaders occasionally on human rights, but I’ve always done it in private.

The greatest security for Israel is to create new Egypts.

The people of the world genuinely want peace. Some day the leaders of the world are going to have to give in and give it to them.

I didn’t want to set up a women’s studies program. I thought women should learn to operate in a coeducational atmosphere, because, especially in national security and international affairs, it’s male-dominated.

Stability is when the U.K. and U.S. invade a country and impose the regime of their choice.

I have always seen the United States as a force of good. And I have learned that there is the idealistic part about what we can do at the U.N. and there is a doable part. And I have learned what is more doable.

War is never a solution; it is an aggravation.

I have a scheme for stopping war. It’s this – no nation is allowed to enter a war till they have paid for the last one.

It’s a near miracle that nuclear war has so far been avoided.

Well, the thing that I learned as a diplomat is that human relations ultimately make a huge difference.

China and the U.S. need each other very badly. Yes, we should argue about some things, but it’s not an ‚us versus them,‘ it’s an ‚us and them‘ type scenario.

Cultures, for better or worse, are very stable.

There’s no way that that our military power will not erode if a robust American economic revival is not part of the cards.

War settles nothing.

We can best help you to prevent war not by repeating your words and following your methods but by finding new words and creating new methods.

I think you can judge from somebody’s actions a kind of a stability and sense of purpose perhaps created by strong religious roots. I mean, there’s a certain patience, a certain discipline, I think, that religion helps you achieve.

The Iranians have shot down drones. They tried to destroy the Saudi oil fields. They tried to storm our embassy. So, when my Democratic friends say we need appeasement, well appeasement hasn’t worked. And I think that we’ve learned, with respect to Iran, that weakness invites the wolves.

If you’re in favour of any policy – reform, revolution, stability, regression, whatever – if you’re at least minimally moral, it’s because you think it’s somehow good for people. And good for people means conforming to their fundamental nature.

Remember, the storm is a good opportunity for the pine and the cypress to show their strength and their stability.

A lot of people think international relations is like a game of chess. But it’s not a game of chess, where people sit quietly, thinking out their strategy, taking their time between moves. It’s more like a game of billiards, with a bunch of balls clustered together.

No one gives a damn what Iran thinks on any significant issue. The only reason Iran is at the big boys‘ table is because of their nuclear weapons program.

Art was, seriously, the only thing I’d ever wanted to own. It has always been for me a stable nourishment. I use it. It can change the way that I feel in the mornings.

And so I think that the idea of America working with other countries to solve problems is good for us, and it is part of digging us out of the ‚my way or the highway‘ approach that was evident in the previous eight years.

It is my view that we cannot conduct foreign policy at the extremes.

The U.N. charter bars the threat of force.

Wars are, of course, as a rule to be avoided; but they are far better than certain kinds of peace.

Global energy security is a vital part of America’s national security.

Your emotions are very unstable and should never be the foundation for direction in your life.

I only change things where I know about a situation. I’d never change just for change.

Democratic nations must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend.

If your payloads cost hundreds of millions of dollars, they actually cost more than the launch. It puts a lot of pressure on the launch vehicle not to change, to be very stable. Reliability becomes much more important than the cost. It’s hard to get off of that equilibrium.

If they want peace, nations should avoid the pin-pricks that precede cannon shots.

President Assad, I worked with. I know him reasonably well, met with him a few times, and he’s a liar.

People are looking for something a little more stable; people are feeling like they need to get closer to God.