Quotes About Power

We are all the President's men.

Empires have no interest in operating within an international system; they aspire to be the international system.

Since Peter the Great, Russia had been expanding at the rate of one Belgium per year.

In the end, peace can be achieved only by hegemony or by balance of power.

History is the memory of States.

power without legitimacy tempts tests of strength; legitimacy without power tepmts empty posturing.

If Tehran insists on combining the Persian imperial tradition with contemporary Islamic fervor, then a collision with America — and, indeed, with its negotiating partners of the Six — is unavoidable. Iran simply cannot be permitted to fulfill a dream of imperial rule in a region of such importance to the rest of the world.

A more immediate issue concerns North Korea, to which Bismarck's nineteenth-century aphorism surely applies: "We live in a wondrous time, in which the strong is weak because of his scruples and the weak grows strong because of his audacity.

The Soviet Union would never be bound by agreements, Deng warned; it understood only the language of countervailing force.

It is . . . a melancholy fact that the countries which are most humanitarian, which are most interested in internal improvement, tend to grow weaker compared with the other countries which possess a less altruistic civilization . . 

For the greatest part of humanity and the longest periods of history, empire has been the typical mode of government.

And history teaches this iron law of revolutions: the more extensive the eradication of existing authority, the more its successors must rely on naked power to establish themselves. For,in the end,legitimacy involves an acceptance of authority without compulsion; its absence turns every contest into a test of strength.

We live in a wondrous time, in which the strong is weak because of his scruples and the weak grows strong because of his audacity.

A Harvard study has shown that in fifteen cases in history where a rising and an established power interacted, ten ended in war.

For Roosevelt, if a nation was unable or unwilling to act to defend its own interests, it could not expect others to respect them. Inevitably

It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal.

Who controls money control the world.

For the balance of power is never static; its components are in constant flux.

Upon learning of Cardinal Richelieu's death, Pope Urban VIII is alleged to have said, "If there is a God, the Cardinal de Richelieu will have much to answer for. If not… well, he had a successful life.

But unlike Machiavelli, Confucius was concerned more with the cultivation of social harmony than with the machinations of power. His themes were the principles of compassionate rule, the performance of correct rituals, and the inculcation of filial piety.

Balance-of-power diplomacy was less a choice than an inevitability. No state was strong enough to impose its will; no religion retained sufficient authority to sustain universality. The concept of sovereignty and the legal equality of states became the basis of international law and diplomacy. China, by contrast, was never engaged in sustained contact with another country on the basis of equality for the simple reason that it never encountered societies of comparable culture or magnitude.

Order always requires a subtle balance of restraint, force, and legitimacy.

A basic conflict is thus arising over Europe between the interests of Atlantic sea-power, which demand the preservation of vigorous and independent political life on the European peninsula, and the interests of the jealous Eurasian land power, which must always seek to extend itself to the west and will never find a place, short of the Atlantic Ocean, where it can from its own standpoint safely stop.

Where Western strategists reflect on the means to assemble superior power at the decisive point, Sun Tzu addresses the means of building a dominant political and psychological position, such that the outcome of a conflict becomes a foregone conclusion. Western strategists test their maxims by victories in battles; Sun Tzu tests by victories where battles have become unnecessary.