Walter Isaacson Quotes

I have always thought that foreign-policy idealism has to be tempered with realism.

When I became secretary of state, I felt one of my primary jobs was building relationships around the world.

Obama's foreign policy is strangely self-centered, focused on himself and the United States rather than on the conduct and needs of the nations the United States allies with, engages with, or must confront.

Our policy is to deepen the relations with all the countries in the world - monarchies, kingdoms, large powers - we want to respect all differences and have our relationships based on mutual respect.

The real danger to Britain is a foreign policy that is isolationist in Europe and therefore weak in the rest of the world.

In critical ways, Obama has reversed not just Bush policy but every president's approach to the world since the Second World War, save for that of his soulmate Jimmy Carter.

The United States' administrations... must recognize that Iran is a big power. Having said that, we consider ourselves to be a human force and a cultural power and hence a friend of other nations. We have never sought to dominate others or to violate the rights of any other country.

Kneejerk interventionism or kneejerk isolationism is the wrong course for Britain.

My view of foreign policy is that we need to be careful and circumspect about United States intervention in any foreign nation.

Foreign Policy has to be less foreign.

You can't build a foreign policy on the presence of an individual [a particular foreign leader].

Multilateralism may be little more than a polite way of camouflaging what is in practice unilateralism with allies.

The United States may have to abandon its policy of avoiding entangling alliances.

You always have more than one goal in foreign policy.

In relations with other nations, there is neither right nor wrong; there is only strength and weakness.

Conquest or superiority among other powers is not or ought not ever to be the object of republican systems.

Abstinence from all injustice to other major powers is a greater tower of strength than anything that can be gained by the sacrifice of permanent tranquility for a seeming temporary advantage.

Political and security realities have reduced the scope of American unilateralism.

Non-alignment will continue to be the fundamental basis of our approach to world problems and our relations with other countries.

I think that America's recovery of a global strategic view is an absolutely essential element of our foreign policy.

I'm in favour of a multi-polar world. I believe that every country has the right to defend its own interests.

With regards to American foreign policy all across the globe, it is important for us to be operating from positions of strength, and not to just concede that.

Foreign policy must be about priorities. The United States cannot do everything everywhere.

German predominance is not all-encompassing. In foreign affairs and military matters, for instance, France and Britain still play a much bigger role. But across a large swathe of European policy, Germany has become much more than a first among equals.

When I became secretary of state, I felt one of my primary jobs was building relationships around the world. And I did spend a lot of time and effort thinking through, How do I connect with this person?..