[Richard Nixon] would have been a great, great man had somebody loved him.

[ Remark after the invasion of Cambodia, 1970 :] We are all the President’s men.

A conventional army loses if it does not win.

A bluff taken seriously is more useful than a serious threat interpreted as a bluff.

To revolutionaries the significant reality is the world which they are fighting to bring about, not the world they are fighting to overcome.

Revolutionaries are rarely motivated primarily by material considerations—though the illusion that they are persists in the West.

Tutelage is a comfortable relationship for the senior partner, but it is demoralizing in the long run. It breeds illusions of omniscience on one side and attitudes of impotent irresponsibility on the other.

The public life of every political figure is a continual struggle to rescue an element of choice from the pressure of circumstance.

The greatest need of the contemporary international system is an agreed concept of order.

In relations with many domestically weak countries, a radio transmitter can be a more effective form of pressure than a squadron of B-52s.