"A great nation's foreign policy involves power, money, trade, oil and arms, but it proeeds from ideas."

William Pfaff Literature See all quotes by William Pfaff →

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“America's problem is how to free itself from the grip of it's exhausted ideas.”

“Our culture is teleological-it presumes purposive development and a conclusion.”

“Europeans believe in democracy - or, at least, in republican government - but they have considered the alternatives, and continue to do so, and that scandalizes Americans.”

“One cannot say that it will never happen again, or that it cannot happen.”

“The center holds; passion falls away. That is what happened ideologically in Western Europe over recent years.”

“It is one of the perceptual defects of Western government and press to assign Western-style motives to what people do in non-Western societies, as if these are universally relevant.”

Resonant Thoughts

"No, the Great Man does not boast himself sincere, far from that; perhaps does not ask himself if he is so: I would say rather, his sincerity does not depend on himself; he cannot help being sincere! T…"

— Thomas Carlyle

Philosophy1795–1881

#truth

"Violence was common in both places, but the violence of the capitalist order seemed inherent in it; whilst the violence of Russia, bad though it was, aimed at a new order based on peace and cooperatio…"

— Jawaharlal Nehru

Politics1889–1964

#freedom

"She was in my poetry seminar at Columbia and I felt that then her poetry was tremendously involved with a kind of female anger but also victimization which I think is something that really has to come…"

— Louise Glück

Literature1943–2023

#power