What is applicable is to understand that first of all China has undergone a huge revolution in the last years. Anyone who saw China as I did in 1971 - and for that matter even in 1979, because not much had changed between 1971 and 1979 - and sees China today, knows one is in a different economic system.
Certainly nothing is easier than to rewrite history. If we had made Taiwan a separate state, it would have led to a fundamental conflict with China, and probably to war. Certainly in the long term, it would have led to war.
I have great respect for the Taiwanese. They have done an extraordinary job. But it was not a sustainable position to say that the legitimate government of China resides in Taiwan, which at that time didn't have much contact with the mainland.
Jews were segregated from 1933 on. We could only play against other Jewish teams. This wasn't just social segregation; this was the beginning of the extermination of the Jews. That's why my family left Germany in 1938.
I have always expressed respect for those people who make public declarations.
Certainly not a party of the workers and the peasants. In fact, Jiang Zemin in recent weeks has officially said that capitalists and the entrepreneurs should be enrolled in the Communist Party.
Almost every peace process that has gone on between the Arab side and Israel, the United States has been somewhat isolated because most of the countries in the world, what they really want is to accept the Arab peace plan or so-called peace plan, which in its present form would lead to the destruction of Israel.
To revolutionaries the significant reality is the world which they are fighting to bring about, not the world they are fighting to overcome.
I don't have a brief for every single reaction of Israel, but I think it is important that the political negotiations occur free of the threat of terrorism.
One of the hardest things for the president is to distinguish the routine issues that come through from the essential issues that affect the long term, and not to let himself get sucked into the battles of the bureaucracy for marginal issues, and to keep them focused and to keep his mind clear on what the fundamental things are that he has to accomplish.
Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered.
Well it did not make excessive sense to say that 20 million people are the recognized government of a billion people that have their own institutions. We did not change it in the sense that we said this has to end, but there was a U.N. vote that transferred the legitimacy of China from Taiwan to Beijing. Beijing was recognized as the government of all of China. Then, under President Carter, we followed what the U.N. had already done eight years earlier.
When I first saw China, there were no automobiles. There were no supermarkets. There were no high-rise buildings. There were no consumer goods. There were no restaurants that were at least accessible that foreigners could see. It was a Stalinist society, and a very poor Stalinist society. So the economic system has totally changed, and the private sector in the economic system is now the dominant sector. It didn't exist at all as late as 1979.
You should not think that you can shape history only by your will. This is also why I'm against the concept of intervention when you don't know its ultimate implications.
Administration has managed the extraordinary feat of having, at one and the same time, the worst relations with our allies, the worst relations with our adversaries, and the most serious upheavals in the developing world since the end of the Second World War.
China had never had to deal in a world of countries of approximately equal strength, and so to adjust to such a world, is in itself a profound challenge to China, which now has fourteen countries on its borders, some of which are small, but can project their nationality into China, some of which are large, and historically significant, so that any attempt by Chinese to dominate the world, would involve in a disastrous for the peace of the world.
Becoming conscious is of course a sacrilege against nature; it is as though you had robbed the unconscious of something. The nice thing about being a celebrity is that if you bore people they think it's their fault.
It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise.
We are doomed to coexist.
If Tehran insists on combining the Persian imperial tradition with contemporary Islamic fervor, then a collision with America and, indeed, with its negotiating partners of the Six is unavoidable. Iran simply cannot be permitted to fulfill a dream of imperial rule in a region of such importance to the rest of the world.
I go out with actresses because I'm not apt to marry one.
We believe that peace is at hand.
You're 18 points down [in the polls]... You might as well do what's right.
Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.
You know, this is a very strange phenomenon. I keep reading that in American newspapers, and I keep reading extensive speculations. I meet with the Chinese leaders periodically, and while I don't say they've endorsed the missile shield, it has not been in the forefront of their discussions.
