NATO was constructed on the – with the reason, whether one believes it or not, that it was going to defend Western Europe from Russian assault. Once the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union was beginning to collapse, that reason was gone. So, first question: why does NATO exist?

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.

We have a firm commitment to NATO, we are a part of NATO. We have a firm commitment to Europe. We are a part of Europe.

The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.

The notion that it is improper to look beyond the borders of the United States in grappling with hard questions has a certain kinship to the view that the U.S. Constitution is a document essentially frozen in time as of the date of its ratification.

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

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.

I see Libya as a member of the Non-Aligned Movement and a sovereign State of the nearly 200 members of the United Nations.

We can not play innocents abroad in a world that is not innocent.

Everybody has forgotten that Russia helped start the Second World War.

I’m not an expert on the arms race.

War is regarded as nothing but the continuation of state policy with other means.

War is not an exercise of the will directed at an inanimate matter.

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.

The United States is supplying the most modern and sophisticated weaponry to Israel to the tune of billions of dollars every year.

Diplomacy: the art of restraining power.

Foreigners don’t want to invest any more in France – and this is not working.

A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best most natural defense of a free country.

The great defense against the air menace is to attack the enemy’s aircraft as near as possible to their point of departure.

Bobby Knight told me this: ‚There is nothing that a good defense cannot beat a better offense.‘ In other words a good offense wins.

From my intimate discussions with President Obama, it is evident that India figures significantly in American geo-political, economic and strategic thinking. India is the largest democracy in the world.

I’ve known and continue to know every one of these major world leaders by their first names, and I have access to them.

I think, under President Obama, who was a really bright guy – I didn’t agree with a lot of his politics – but we got to the point internationally where our friends didn’t trust us. They were confused. And our enemies didn’t quite respect us.

Many things shall change in Cuba, but they shall change because of our efforts and despite the United States. Perhaps that empire shall crumble first.

We have to distrust each other. It is our only defense against betrayal.

Unless India stands up to the world, no one will respect us. In this world, fear has no place. Only strength respects strength.

Take the diplomacy out of war and the thing would fall flat in a week.

Following the missile crisis, detente started to gain ground between the United States and the Soviet Union, so the international political climate improved after that.

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

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

A war is a horrible thing, but it’s also a unifier of countries.

No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time.

When I was 18, I went to the Soviet Union. I kept hearing that America was planning to bomb them – lots of bombs were going to come down on these people. I went there not knowing anything, except that I thought the whole thing was stupid and that I wanted to see who these people were that we were going to bomb.

I will never relent in defending America – whatever it takes.

NATO has been a thread throughout my life.

When I was in the White House, I was confronted with the challenge of the Cold War. Both the Soviet Union and I had 30,000 nuclear weapons that could destroy the entire earth and I had to maintain the peace.

Education is the cheap defense of nations.

It makes sense for Japan to pursue a more independent role in the world, following Latin America and others in freeing itself from U.S. domination.

We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.

War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.

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.

Japan is an important ally of ours. Japan and the United States of the Western industrialized capacity, 60 percent of the GNP, two countries. That’s a statement in and of itself.

When George W. Bush came into office, North Korea had maybe one nuclear weapon and verifiably wasn’t producing any more.

U.S. analysts estimate that Russian military expenditures have tripled during the Bush-Putin years, in large measure a predicted reaction to the Bush administration’s militancy and aggressiveness.

For something to collapse, not all systems have to shut down. In most cases, just one system is enough. For example, the human body is a system of systems. If just one system, such as the cardiovascular system, shuts down, death follows.

A world without nuclear weapons would be less stable and more dangerous for all of us.

Today, India is a nuclear weapons state.

I want the troops from Great Britain and the U.S. to be successful, but by the same token, Afghanistan has always been a screw-up.

The Spanish Empire eventually collapsed because of its expensive taste for warfare and conquest.

The U.S. is not constructing a palatial embassy, by far the largest in the world and virtually a separate city within Baghdad, and pouring money into military bases, with the intention of leaving Iraq to Iraqis.

We prefer world law in the age of self-determination to world war in the age of mass extermination.

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

I am well aware that there are prisoners of conscience in the Soviet Union, including some who have said they have chosen to resist the law because of religious reasons.

In our time political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.

In the case of Yugoslavia v. NATO, one of the charges was genocide. The U.S. appealed to the court, saying that, by law, the United States is immune to the charge of genocide, self-immunized, and the court accepted that, so the case proceeded against the other NATO powers, but not against the United States.

Take it from someone who fled the Iron Curtain: I know what happens when you give the Russians a green light.

The power of an air force is terrific when there is nothing to oppose it.

Egypt is the second-largest recipient over a long period of U.S. military and economic aid. Israel is first.

I noticed words crudely spray-painted upon the wall, perhaps by a young Berliner: ‚This wall will fall. Beliefs become reality.‘ Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.

Politics is the womb in which war develops.

In 1963, the U.N. Security Council declared a voluntary arms embargo on South Africa. That was extended to a mandatory embargo in 1977. And that was followed by economic sanctions and other measures – sometimes officials, countries, cities, towns – some organized by popular movements.