Dick Morris Quotes

President Obama came to office with a strong belief that America had overreached, that we had become too involved. It matched the national mood, and indeed, there was some evidence that it was true.

The Vietnam War required us to emphasize the national interest rather than abstract principles. What President Nixon and I tried to do was unnatural. And that is why we didn't make it.

America is exceptional in combining standard great-power realism with extravagant idealism about the country's redemptive role in creating international order.

I don't believe foreign policy is about altruism.

Whatever it is that the government does, sensible Americans would prefer that the government does it to somebody else. This is the idea behind foreign policy.

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

No nation has friends only interests.

Republican isolationists had certainly tied the hands of every U.S. president, year after year - berating Franklin Roosevelt in particular and his attempts to ready the nation for inevitable attack.

I have ever deemed it fundamental for the United States never to take active part in the quarrels of Europe. Their political interests are entirely distinct from ours. Their mutual jealousies, their balance of power, their complicated alliances, their forms and principles of government, are all foreign to us. They are nations of eternal war.

I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.

[Describing Russia:] ... the most realistic regime in the world—no ideals.

Promoting democracy is one goal of U. S. foreign policy dating back at least 100 years. But it has always been one goal of many, often negated and outweighed by other competing interests.

America would never consent to become entangled in European diplomacy…

Tensions plagued his [Woodrow Wilson’s] presidency--particularly the one between principal and pragmatism in United States foreign policy. This is perpetual and the defies resolution.

U. S. foreign policy in the 20th century was characterized by disastrous oscillations between over-commitment and isolation

As long as Americans believe that their country has vital interests everywhere on earth, they will behave the same.

The historical ambivalence of the United States toward global engagement is a thread that runs through American history.

I know I will be severely criticized by the interventionists in America when I say we should not enter a war unless we have a reasonable chance of winning.

America has been a force for much good in the world. But we should learn from the mistakes of an over-expansionist foreign policy and return to the restraint that George Washington and John Quincy Adams advocated.

I believe, and always have, that America must engage - not retreat - in the world.

A country that demands moral perfection in its foreign policy will achieve neither perfection nor security.

President Nixon was a pragmatic strategist. He would engage, not contain, China, but he would also quietly set pieces into place for a fallback position should China not play according to the rules as a good global citizen.

I think Bush was seen as someone who was disentangling America from the connections that it had with the outside world, that it found encumbering for domestic purposes.

The predominant yardstick of your government is not human rights but national interests.

Foreign policy is an explicitly amoral enterprise.