Thomas Jefferson Quotes

The friendships of nations, built on common interests, cannot survive the mutability of those interests.

I thought, between sports and news and television and friendship, that you could end the Cold War and, by God, we did.

Today, it is imperative to end this hysteria, to refute the rhetoric of the Cold War and to accept the obvious fact: Russia is an independent, active participant in international affairs. Like other countries, it has its own national interests that need to be taken into account and respected.

Global politics remains extremely complex and countries have different interests, which will also lead them to make what might seem as rather bizarre friends and allies.

The international community lies at the center of the Obama foreign policy. Unfortunately, it is a fiction. There is no such thing. Different countries have different histories, geographies, necessities, and interests. There's no natural, inherent, or enduring international community.

No foreign policy, no matter how ingenious, has any chance of success if it is born in the minds of a few and carried in the hearts of none.

America cannot meet this century's challenges alone; the world cannot meet them without America.

You should never make alliances with a decadent nation like France and a semi-barbarous nation like Russia

I realised that if we were not in the E.U., there were people in the E.U. who were also members of NATO that would veto our joining NATO.

Europeans must shed their illusions about what they can accomplish in the world on their own. Loose talk about resurrecting a multi-polar world is just that - loose talk.

Hard power makes sense under some circumstances. But there's not a universal solution to global problems. A major country like the United States has to have a broadly-conceived program for effective international action, influence and cooperation with others.

What Donald Trump is determined to do, as someone who has spent a lifetime looking for deals, is to see if we can have a new relationship with Russia and other countries that advances the interests of America first and the peace and security of the world.

I have respect for leaders who defend the interests of their countries. Angela Merkel policies are positive for Germany, but they are unfortunately harmful for all other countries.

The point is that in any country, including the United States, may be in the United States even more often than in any other country, foreign policy is used for internal political struggle.

There are many other areas. And I am confident that each of them is of interest to both the people of the United States of America and the Russian people.

The thing is, however strange it may seem, that the interests of the United States and of the Russian Federation do coincide sometimes.

If Putin likes Donald Trump, I consider that an asset, not a liability, because we have a horrible relationship with Russia.

I think both sides [China and United States] should work hard to build a new type of relationship between big powers. The two sides should cooperate with each other for a win-win result in order to benefit people from the two countries and the world.

If our country got along with Russia, that would be a great thing. When Putin goes out and tells everybody - and you talk about a relationship, but he says Donald Trump is going to win and Donald Trump is a genius, and then I have people saying you should disavow. I said, I'm going to disavow that?

I don't expect that the president-elect [Donald Trump] will follow exactly our blueprint or our approach, but my hope is that he does not simply take a real-politic approach and suggest that, you know, if we just cut some deals with Russia, even if it hurts people or even if it violates international norms, or even if it leaves smaller countries vulnerable or creates long-term problems in regions like Syria, that we just do whatever is convenient at the time.

The reputation of those countries which cater to the foreign policy interests of other states at the expense of their own national interests will go down regardless of how they explain their actions.

George W. Bush tried working with the Russians after 9/11; Obama had the reset. Both presidents achieved less than they wanted, but they both achieved something. Those policies made sense, and it's to the credit of both Presidents Bush and Obama that even as they reached out to Russia, they did not sacrifice core American interests, or core American values. We didn't give the Russians on the altar of better relations other countries. We were able to do two things at once.

It was about the compelling need to make countries get along to prevent war, in contrast with the totally petty and selfish bullshit that drives the individuals who are supposedly in charge of these countries. It's hard to believe that these self-centered people have nuclear weapons that they can fire at any moment.

There are instances in which American interests align with Russia and there are those where they don't. And so the question is, can we help steer Russia to being something that doesn't conflict with our interests and something that - and a country that aligns with our interests?

Such then is the human condition, that to wish greatness for one's country is to wish harm to one's neighbors.