High office teaches decision making, not substance. It consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it. Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered; they learn how to make decisions but not what decisions to make.
There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.
In the middle ’50s, I had written that the point would come, inevitably, at which the relationship between the cause of conflict and political objectives would be lost.
I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.
The nuclear weapons were not useful for the achievement of political objectives.
It is one of history’s ironies that Communism, advertised as a classless society, tended to breed a privileged class of feudal proportions.
Art is man’s expression of his joy in labor.
I grew up as a discriminated minority in a dictatorship, so obviously the issue of human rights is a matter of concern for me.
What we in America call terrorists are really groups of people that reject the international system.
Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.
I think a resumption of the Cold War would be a historic tragedy. If a conflict is avoidable, on a basis reflecting morality and security, one should try to avoid it.
Even a paranoid can have enemies.
If eighty percent of your sales come from twenty percent of all of your items, just carry those twenty percent.
Moderation is a virtue only in those who are thought to have an alternative.
Before there was the Soviet Union that could inflame matters. Now you have states not as powerful as the Soviet Union, but states like Iraq, like Iran, and to some extent Syria, having made it possible for some of these groups to operate. So it is a very difficult situation.
The nice thing about being a celebrity is that, if you bore people, they think it’s their fault.
The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself.
Any fact that needs to be disclosed should be put out now or as quickly as possible, because otherwise the bleeding will not end.
Power is the great aphrodisiac.