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

Diplomacy: the art of restraining power.

The Bush Administration’s failure to be consistently involved in helping Israel achieve peace with the Palestinians has been both wrong for our friendship with Israel, as well as badly damaging to our standing in the Arab world.

As a nuclear power – as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon – the United States has a moral responsibility to act.

A war with Pakistan would be an utter disaster.

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.

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

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

There is no avoiding war; it can only be postponed to the advantage of others.

Israel is a pretty crazy state.

Optimism means better than reality; pessimism means worse than reality. I’m a realist.

I’ve always been fascinated with the stealing of innocence. It’s the most heinous crime, and certainly a capital crime if there ever was one.

We are in danger of destroying ourselves by our greed and stupidity. We cannot remain looking inwards at ourselves on a small and increasingly polluted and overcrowded planet.

The most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop.

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.

It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one.

The Russians feared Ike. They didn’t fear me.

While the Chinese people, as a rule, are good people, my business dealings with Communist Chinese officials have left me disturbed and concerned about the rise of the Chinese Empire.

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

Putin sought to keep Ukraine weak through corruption.

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

Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.

There is an innocence in admiration; it is found in those to whom it has never yet occurred that they, too, might be admired some day.

We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times… and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK. That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen.

We should not look at terrorism from the nameplates – which group they belong to, what is their geographical location, who are the victims. These individual groups or names will keep changing. Today you are looking at the Taliban or ISIS; tomorrow you might be looking at another name.

I grew up with J. Edgar Hoover. He was the G-man, a hero to everybody, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation was the big, feared organization. He was ahead of his time as far as building up forensic evidence and fingerprinting. But he took down a lot of innocent people, too.

The Oslo Accords in 1993 determined that the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are a single territorial entity which cannot be divided. Immediately, the United States and Israel set about separating the two and making sure that they would not be united.

There are nuclear-weapons-free zones in several parts of the world already, except that they’re not implemented fully, because the U.S. won’t allow it.

The Soviet government is the most realistic regime in the world – no ideals.

There are lots of countries that are having these kinds of internal civil wars in other parts of the world and nobody is talking about intervening.

Although I don’t like the way the Chinese do business, I continue to do business in China. I have to. They’re the next world power.

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

The target of preventive war must have several characteristics. It must be virtually defenceless; it must be important enough to be worth the trouble; it must be possible to portray it as the ultimate evil and an imminent threat to our survival.

America’s promises do not come with a price tag. We meet our commitments. We bear our burdens. That’s one of the reasons why almost every country on Earth sees America as stronger and more respected today than they did eight years ago when I took office.

All History is current; all injustice continues on some level, somewhere in the world.

I believe mutual respect for one another and cooperation should be the basis for relationships with foreign nations.

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

I’m more of a realist when it comes to life, and I’d much rather my mother be in a spiritual place in Heaven than in a bed, sick, fighting for her life.

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

I truly believe that when the history books are written, our age will be remembered for three things: the war on terror, the digital revolution, and what we did – or did not do – to put the fire out in Africa. History, like God, is watching what we do.

The doctrine that everything is fine as long as the population is quiet, that applies in the Middle East, applies in Central America, it applies in the United States.

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.

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

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.

A very large majority of the U.S. population is in favor of establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba and has been for a long time with some fluctuations. And even part of the business world is in favor of it, too. But the government won’t allow it.

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.

Let’s be honest – tracking down, rounding up, and deporting millions of people isn’t realistic. Anyone who suggests otherwise isn’t being straight with you. It’s also not who we are as Americans.

God never meant that people were to wear clothes. He meant we were to be nude. But we were in a state of innocence. Then sin came into the human race and became a blood poisoning.

The greatest security for Israel is to create new Egypts.

I’ve still not written as well as I want to. I want to write so that the reader in Des Moines, Iowa, in Kowloon, China, in Cape Town, South Africa, can say, ‚You know, that’s the truth. I wasn’t there, and I wasn’t a six-foot black girl, but that’s the truth.‘

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative.

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

I don’t know why you use a fancy French word like detente when there’s a good English phrase for it – cold war.

When one travels around the world, one notices to what an extraordinary degree human nature is the same, whether in India or America, in Europe or Australia.

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

History shows that, more often than not, loss of sovereignty leads to liberalisation imposed in the interests of the powerful.

After 2014, we will support a unified Afghanistan as it takes responsibility for its own future.

Unlike Europe, China can’t be intimidated. Europe backs down if the United States looks at it the wrong way. But China, they’ve been there for 3,000 years and are paying no attention to the barbarians and don’t see any need to.

The only defensible war is a war of defense.

For somebody who loves foreign policy, being Secretary is the best job in the world – but it doesn’t happen twice.

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