84 Quotes by George Friedman

A president must know what it is he does not know, and he should remain calm in pursuit of it, but there is no obligation to be honest about it.

The reality is that the American people have no desire for an empire. This is not to say that they don't want the benefits, both economic and strategic. It simply means that they don't want to pay the price. Economically, Americans want the growth potential of open markets but not the pains. Politically, they want to have an enormous influence, but not the resentment of the world. Military, they want to be protected from dangers but not to bear the burdens of long-term strategy.

Strategy is something that emerges from reality, while tactics might be chosen.

Europeans have always thought of U.S. presidents as either naive, as they did with Jimmy Carter, or as cowboys, as they did with Lyndon Johnson, and held them in contempt in either case.

Recent presidents have gone off on ad hoc adventures. They have set unattainable goal because they have framed the issue incorrectly, as they believed their own rhetoric.

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

In the course of the century, so many individual decisions are made that no single one of them is ever critical. Each decision is lost in the torrent of judgments that make up a century.

There are possibilities to shape the world in ways that are in the American national interest. This isn't a permanent situation. It's not going to stay here forever ... We're not talking about them or taking advantage of them.

I find it amazing to watch the Democrats who have consistently argued that the Bush administration holds a simplistic understanding of the world, and treats all Muslims as equals, to take this position.