The very phrase ‚foreign affairs‘ makes an Englishman convinced that I am about to treat of subjects with which he has no concern.

There’s a tremendous gap between public opinion and public policy.

It is easy enough to define what the Commonwealth is not. Indeed this is quite a popular pastime.

Worth seeing? Yes; but not worth going to see.

I’ve analyzed the best I can… and I have not found an impeachable offense, and therefore resignation is not an acceptable course.

Cunning… is but the low mimic of wisdom.

People are always asking me in interviews, ‚What do you think of foreign affairs?‘ I just say, ‚I’ve had a few.‘

Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

Prejudices are what fools use for reason.

I sleep people. I put people unconscious. I’m stating facts.

For 18 years I have resisted talking about current events. I am not going to start now.

There’s no doubt that inequality destabilizes societies. I think the social science evidence on that front is crystal clear.

I thought Star Wars was too wacky for the general public.

The story as told in The Odyssey doesn’t hold water. There are too many inconsistencies.

Hesitation increases in relation to risk in equal proportion to age.

For all right judgment of any man or things it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad.

Politically there were failures. And also on the personal level, there were tremendous failures.

It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.

We dissect failure a lot more than we dissect success.

Thinking fragments reality – it cuts it up into conceptual bits and pieces.

There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.

Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference.

I don’t think there’s anything unique about human intelligence.

I think it’s funny to be delicate with subjects that are explosive.

Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

When I was researching my book ‚The 33 Strategies of War‘, I studied Napoleon extensively and I found myself wanting to ask Napoleon questions about things he did, and if was I interpreting his actions correctly.

Pop is totally results-oriented and there is a very strong feedback loop.

As a Western, ‚The Magnificent Seven‘ was a pretty good film. I don’t think it was as interesting or as multi-faceted as ‚Seven Samurai.‘

I do not believe any of the statistical claims that are made about public opinion. I don’t see why anybody does.

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.

Politics I supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.

Study men, not historians.

In no instance have… the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people.

The United States, to state the obvious, is greatly concerned by the startling number of unaccompanied minors that – children and teenagers who are making a very perilous journey through Central America to reach the United States.

The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose.

Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.

That the divided but contiguous particles of bodies may be separated from one another is a matter of observation; and, in the particles that remain undivided, our minds are able to distinguish yet lesser parts, as is mathematically demonstrated.

I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the Scriptures, but with experiments, and demonstrations.

When you think about it, Adolf Hitler was the first pop star.

It’s clearly a budget. It’s got a lot of numbers in it.

The point – the power to hurt – of all figures lies in the truthfulness of their application.

In the last analysis, what we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do.

Perhaps there are none more lazy, or more truly ignorant, than your everlasting readers.

The U.S. increasingly has taken on the characteristics of what we describe as ‚failed states.‘

History should be written as philosophy.

This administration is going to be cussed and discussed for years to come.

Today, all physicists know from studying Einstein and Bohr that sometimes an idea which looks completely paradoxical at first, if analyzed to completion in all detail and in experimental situations, may, in fact, not be paradoxical.

Every philosophical problem, when it is subjected to the necessary analysis and justification, is found either to be not really philosophical at all, or else to be, in the sense in which we are using the word, logical.

Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.

The false is nothing but an imitation of the true.

In the last analysis, even the best man is evil: in the last analysis, even the best woman is bad.

The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.

As apostles and prophets, we are concerned not only for our children and grandchildren but for yours as well – and for each of God’s children.

The economy’s always been the engine for our national security.

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted… but to weigh and consider.

Realists do not fear the results of their study.

Anything popular is populist, and populist is rarely a good adjective.

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.

This is not writing at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant.