Writer Quotes

Boxing is smoky halls and kidneys battered until they bleed.

When it comes to setting national priorities, determining threats, defining challenges, and fashioning and implementing foreign and defense policies, the United States and Europe have parted ways.

Well, I think he's right to notice that there is a difference in attitudes and even in the broadest sense of world view between Eastern Europe and Western Europe. Which is old and which is new is an interesting question, and I almost think that maybe he's got it backwards.

Under our Constitution, military leaders have no choice but to endorse the president's decision after giving him their best advice.

The thing that I would say is that U.S. power is not eternal. I am not saying that it won't come to an end. Because it will.

It is true that I have known Straussians almost all my life. And the one thing I was taught about them from the earliest age is that they are wrong.

In my view, America has never had the opportunity to enter paradise. Europe enjoys the paradise it enjoys, in part because the United States provides the overall security that allows Europe to live in a system where military power is not a major issue.

I think most Americans believe that although it's better not to use military force if you can avoid it, that the world simply doesn't provide us the luxury of giving away military force as an important tool of foreign policy.

I left Russia in 1993 optimistic that democracy had taken hold despite the obstacles.

I believe it is still true that conflicts among major powers usually stem from geopolitical rivalries but rarely from economic competition.

Britain has taken itself out as a major player in the international system, at least for a while, with the kind of cuts that they've made in their national security budget.

Based on all criteria - military power, economic influence, cultural dominance - America remains number one, even though other, new players are increasingly challenging it in that role.

Americans are from Mars, Europeans are from Venus: they agree on little and understand each other less and less.

Be charitable and indulge to everyone, but thyself.

Ask the young. They know everything.

All are born to observe order, but few are born to establish it.

Without the spiritual world the material world is a disheartening enigma.

Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure. Emotion is easily transferred from the writer to the reader.

Misery is almost always the result of thinking.

Love and fear. Everything the father of a family says must inspire one or the other.

He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet.

The direction of the mind is more important than its progress.

The best remedy for a short temper is a long walk.

How many people make themselves abstract to appear profound. The most useful part of abstract terms are the shadows they create to hide a vacuum.

Grace is in garments, in movements, in manners; beauty in the nude, and in forms. This is true of bodies; but when we speak of feelings, beauty is in their spirituality, and grace in their moderation.

Children need models rather than critics.

We must respect the past, and mistrust the present, if we wish to provide for the safety of the future.

Logic works, metaphysics contemplates.

It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.

Politeness is the flower of humanity.