Paul Hoffman Quotes

Knowledge is generally considered a good thing; so, presumably, knowing more about how the U.S. thinks and operates around the world is also good.

Whatever one thinks of President George W. Bush and his unilateralist crew, most of the people laughing at us do not think we are evil. What they think is that we are naive and incompetent.

Truman is now seen as a near-great president because he put in place the containment doctrine boosted by the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan and NATO, which historians now see as having been at the center of American success in the cold war.

Nixon was an awful president in many ways, including in some of his foreign-policy choices. But he left no doubt that foreign policy and America's leadership in the world outside its borders was of paramount importance to him.

As far as we were concerned, we were operators, we were administrators. I don't ever recall going to Dean Acheson and asking for any counsel or advice on administration, but I had the greatest respect for him, as I have today.

Roosevelt was the one who had the vision to change our policy from isolationism to world leadership. That was a terrific revolution. Our country's never been the same since.

To be frank, I don't think President Obama gives much thought to Africa - or gives much to Africa.

John Danforth, I thought, was a great senator and did a great job with the United Nations. I think he's a good man.

When you get to experience something that is outside of your reality, it changes you.

President Obama, like every other leader on Earth, is still going to be looking out for national and economic interests. States don't cease to be states overnight just because they get a great visionary as their new president.

I found it marvelous that the great supporters of America in Europe are, of course, those countries that American consistency and firmness in the Cold War ended up liberating.

Scholars and historians have dubbed the last 100 years the American Century, and I think there can be little doubt that the Council on Foreign Relations helped to make it so.

It's clear that the United States has more to give the world than military bases.

And then a great thing in my life was going to India.

The United States, obviously, has a great interest in helping to maintain peace and security in Europe, and we have a formal alliance, NATO, to do so.

[Writing of Harry Truman:] The 1947 assumption of responsibility in the Eastern Mediterranean, the 1948 grandeur of the Marshall Plan, the response to the blockade of Berlin, the NATO defense of Europe in 1949, and the intervention in Korea in 1950—all those constituted expanded action in truly heroic mold. All of them required rare capacity to decide and act.

He [President John F. Kennedy] was very well informed. I think that's why he wasn't afraid of the press.

The United States now has as its goal much more than simply containing Soviet expansionism. We seek the integration of the Soviet Union into the communlty of nations.... Ultimately, our objective is to welcome the Soviet Union back into the world order.

No one can think intelligently on the many complicated problems of American foreign policy unless he decides first what he considers the real purpose and object of that policy…. Fundamentally, I believe the ultimate purpose of our foreign policy must be to protect the liberty of the people of the United States.

I don't recall anyone who was strongly against except one man, and that was the President [JFK]. The President just didn't want to be convinced that this was the right thing to do.... It was really the President's personal conviction that U.S. ground troops shouldn't go in.

Trump has the opportunity to be the president who, like Harry Truman, redirected U.S. foreign policy for a generation.

Americans must place greater emphasis on the more subtle dimensions of national power, such as innovation, education, the balance of force and diplomacy, and the quality of political leadership.

One of the reasons America is welcome in Asia is because with America... there is a certain idealism and a certain bigness of soul. You want the region to prosper; you want countries to do well, and you are prepared to help them.

There is an issue of what does the U.S. expect abroad and what does the U.S. give at home. I think there's a reconciliation there that needs to be done.

I think young people ought to seek the experience that is going to knock them off center.