The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it’s so rare.
To strip our past of glory is no great loss, but to deny it honor is devastating.
When a person goes to a country and finds their newspapers filled with nothing but good news, he can bet there are good men in jail.
The US wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The department of state desired that the UN prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success.
It is perhaps common in the world for individuals and nations to suffer for their noble qualities more than for their ignoble ones. For nobility is an occasion for pride, the most treacherous of sentiments.
Things become complicated if there are enough people to complexify them.
What the press never does say is who the leaker is and why he wants the story leaked. Yet, more often than not, this is the more important story: What policy wins if the one being disclosed loses?
At 14 you are still in most respects a dependent youth, in some respects a child. At 24 you are an adult. In between, extraordinary turbulences take place.
It has proved politically wiser to set goals than to start programs.
Citizen participation is a device whereby public officials induce nonpublic individuals to act in a way the officials desire.
If you don’t have 30 years to devote to social policy, don’t get involved.
As the family goes, so go the children.
No one is innocent after the experience of governing. But not everyone is guilty.
The issue of race could benefit from a period of benign neglect.
Am I embarrassed to speak for a less than perfect democracy? Not one bit. Find me a better one. Do I suppose there are societies which are free of sin? No, I don’t. Do I think ours is, on balance, incomparably the most hopeful set of human relations the world has? Yes, I do.
A commonplace of political rhetoric has it that the quality of a civilization may be measured by how it cares for its elderly. Just as surely, the future of a society may be forecast by how it cares for its young.
Irresponsibility breeds irresponsibility. The finances of government are so central. You’d think that would be pretty obvious.
People who pierce the veil of money rarely return with their faculties altogether intact.
The world’s largest debtor is a distinction of sorts, but not the one we like having...
A responsible government does not triple the national debt in eight years.
In the era of security clearances, to be an Irish Catholic became prima facie evidence of loyalty. Harvard men were to be checked; Fordham men would do the checking.