Zbigniew Brzezinski Quotes

Nothing in the constitutions of Western states requires them to get involved in every foreign conflict.

Foreign policy - dealing as it does with the most charged political subjects of all, the safety and dignity of the nation - will always be political terrain particularly vulnerable to distortion and demagoguery.

Governments interfere in the affairs of each other, when they conceive their own peace is endangered.

The organizing premise of any nation's foreign policy is the protection of the homeland.

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

Foreign policy is really domestic policy with its hat on.

The principles that should guide American foreign policy are simple: the world is safer when America leads, only strength ensures peace and freedom, and America must stand with its allies and challenge its adversaries.

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 think that the president of Iran has the authority wherever which - where - wherever the national interests of the country are involved and, when it is necessary and expedient and required to speak and talk with others in order to promote the rights of its nation, that the president can take that initiative.

A great country worthy of the name does not have any friends.

Americans understand that our security is enhanced when the United States is trusted and respected in the world.

The very heart of being a sovereign nation is providing security of one's borders, of one's internal situation, and security against anyone attacking one's nation. That is the very heart of what I believe is sovereignty.

In these days of intimate relations, of economic stress and of intense desire to protect national interests and advance national opportunity, the treatment of questions which, from a legal standpoint, are domestic, often seriously affects international relations. The principle, each nation for itself to the full extent of its powers, is the principle of war, not of peace.

Every government is in some respects a problem for every other government.

All members will refrain in their international relations from the threat or the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.

That is where American foreign policy begins—with the interest, the aspirations, and the values of the American people.

Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.

Foreign policy begins with domestic policy.

Foreign policy is too important to be left up to foreign service officers.

You cannot have individual foreign policy. You cannot have celebrity foreign policy.

We [the French] have to keep defending our vital interests …, we can say no, alone, to anything that may be unacceptable.

You always have more than one goal in foreign policy.

There are plenty who think a union should not speak out, fight for or criticize the foreign policy of our government; that it should be a matter of our government, right or wrong, in matters of foreign policy. We have never adhered to that belief. And we shouldn’t.

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.

A President who wants to focus on domestic affairs must put foreign policy in a framework that Americans understand and that makes them feel secure.