The Chinese have a long history of slaughtering each other without bothering their neighbors.

Wars are times of intense technological transformation, because societies invest - sometimes with extensive borrowing - when and where matters of life and death are at stake.

Conventional analysis suffers from a profound failure of imagination. It imagines passing clouds to be permanent and is blind to powerful, long-term shifts taking place in full view of the world.

I think there are worse things than war. For example, injustice.

Anger does not make history. Power does. And power may be supplemented by anger, but it derives from more fundamental realities; geography, demographics, technology, and culture.

What is American strategy first of all? So American strategy is to command the seas, right? The foundation of our power is sea control. Nobody can invade us, but we can invade them.

Well the most likely emerging countries are Japan, Turkey, and Poland. So I would say Eastern Europe, the Middle East and a maritime war by Japan with the United States enjoying its own pleasures.

A century is about events. A decade is about people.

Idealism is frequently another word for self-righteousness, a disease that can only be corrected by a profound understanding power in its complete sense.

The tragedy of the human condition is that the thing that makes us most human - community - originates in the inhumanity of war.

The poets think about war more than the social scientists.

The biggest mistake is trusting the wrong people who generally are also the dumbest.

Honor is the presence of God in man.

Now it is quite clear to me that there are no solid spheres in the heavens, and those that have been devised by the authors to save the appearances, exist only in the imagination.

Thinking is the hardest work we do.

I know Sir John will go, though he was sure it would rain cats and dogs.

Even those who fancy themselves the most progressive will fight against other kinds of progress, for each of us is convinced that our way is the best way.

Our proportionate admission of the claims of good or of evil determines the harmony of our existence, - our health, our longevity, and our Christianity.

I was raised on comic books, and I love science fiction.

'The End of America' details the 10 steps that would-be dictators always take in seeking to close an open society; it argued that the Bush administration had been advancing each one.

I'm much more used to the TV shows, which are demanding to write and perform but very fulfilling.