When you’re in love, you want to tell the world. This book is a personal statement, reflecting my lifelong love affair with science.

But there’s another reason: science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children or grandchildren’s time — when the US is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

They are young, they have not known hardship. And I hope they never will. Because it is part of my job not to bring unnecessary hardships.

What most annoyed Kissinger was the manner in which Obama talked about some other world leaders. “A puzzling aspect about Obama is how someone so intelligent could treat his peers with the disdain he did in your article,” he said. “Someone of that stature usually develops a sense of humility.”

In my opinion, Obama seems to think of himself not as a part of a political process, but as sui generis, a unique phenomenon with a unique capacity. And his responsibility, as he defines it, is to keep the insensitive elements of America from unsettling the world. He is more concerned with short-term consequences turning into permanent obstacles. Another view of statesmanship might focus to a greater extent on shaping history rather than avoiding getting in its way.

The president should ask, “What are we trying to achieve, even if we must pursue it alone?” and “What are we trying to prevent, even if we must combat it alone?” The answers to these questions are the indispensable aspects of our foreign policy, which ought to form the basis of our strategic decisions.

The world is in chaos. Fundamental upheavals are occurring in many parts of the world simultaneously, most of which are governed by disparate principles. We are therefore faced with two problems: first, how to reduce regional chaos; second, how to create a coherent world order based on agreed-upon principles that are necessary for the operation of the entire system.

  • What are America’s perpetual, eternal interests?
  • I would begin by saying that we have to have faith in ourselves. That is an absolute requirement. We can’t reduce policy to a series of purely tactical decisions or self-recriminations. The fundamental strategic question is: What is it that we will not permit, no matter how it happens, no matter how legitimate it looks?

I respect John Kerry for his courage and persistence. In Syria, he is striving for a coalition government composed of groups that have been engaged in a genocidal war with one another. Even if you could construct such a government, unless you identify a dominant actor, you have to answer this question: Who will settle disputes when they inevitably arise? The existence of a government does not guarantee that it will be perceived as legitimate or that its pronouncements will be obeyed. Kerry has come to understand that other pressures are needed to achieve the stated objective—a change from his position in the Vietnam War. The use of force is the ultimate sanction of diplomacy. Diplomacy and power are not discrete activities. They are linked, though not in the sense that each time negotiations stall, you resort to force. It simply means that the opposite number in a negotiation needs to know there is a breaking point at which you will attempt to impose your will. Otherwise, there will be a deadlock or a diplomatic defeat. That point is dependent on three components: the possession of adequate and relevant power, tactical willingness to deploy it, and a strategic doctrine that disciplines a society’s power with its values.

After its early years, America was lucky enough not to be threatened with invasion as it developed, not least because we were surrounded by two great oceans. As a consequence, America has conceived of foreign policy as a series of discrete challenges to be addressed as they arise on their merits rather than as part of an overall design.

Not until the post–World War II period did we begin to think of foreign policy as a continuous process, even in seemingly tranquil circumstances. For at least 20 years, we forged alliances as a way to put down markers as much as to design a strategy. Henceforth, we must devise a more fluid strategy adjustable to changing circumstance. We must therefore study the histories and cultures of key international actors. We must also be permanently involved in international affairs.

Yet there is another paradoxical explanation for conflict. Conflict could occur, on the one hand, because of a gradual escalation of tension, and on the other, because the states have come to expect their ultimate solutions as normal. World War I resulted in large part from the fact that states’ impact on one another was, for quite a long period, successfully managed. Suddenly, a crisis comes along that in its essence is not more severe than what had been handled before—indeed, you could argue, less severe than the Balkan wars that had preceded it. But in the assassination of the Austrian archduke and his wife, a number of accidents compounded the crisis. Because the wife was not of royal blood, the heads of state were not obligated to attend the funeral. Had they all assembled, they might have been able to negotiate an informal diplomatic solution to the immediate Serbian problem. Moreover, in pre–World War I Europe, two rising powers were confronting each other. A rising Germany was threatening Britain’s command of the seas, while a rising Russia was threatening Germany’s role in Central Europe. Germany, after Bismarck, had maneuvered itself into a position of being a fortress surrounded by a hostile France in the west and a hostile Russia in the east. So its strategic objective became, in any war that happened, whatever the cause, to defeat one of these enemies first.

Live with total integrity. Be transparent, honest, and authentic. Do not ever waiver from this; white lies and false smiles quickly snowball into a life lived out of alignment. It is better to be yourself and risk having people not like you than to suffer the stress and tension that comes from pretending to be someone you’re not, or professing to like something that you don’t. I promise you: Pretending will rob you of joy.

No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else other than you.

We should do (as wise programmers aware of our limitations) our utmost best to … make the correspondence between the program (spread out in text space) and the process (spread out in time) as trivial as possible.

Tưởng Giới Thạch có cái bạo dạn, tự tin khác hẳn với sự nhẹ nhàng, điềm đạm của Lưu Kỷ Văn. Mỹ Linh rút mạnh tay, chăm chú nhìn ông ta, nói:

  • Tôi không yêu ngài! Tôi đã có chồng chưa cưới. Anh ấy đang học để thi lấy học vị tiến sĩ tại Trường đại học Harvard… Chúng tôi đính hôn được 5 năm… Nói đến đó, bỗng nhiên nước mắt Mỹ Linh trào ra. Tưởng Giới Thạch lại một lần nữa nắm chặt tay Mỹ Linh, nói:
  • Nàng khóc, cho thấy lòng nàng đang mâu thuẫn. Tôi không thể rút lui, tôi sẽ cạnh tranh với anh ta.
  • Ngài không thể đoạt được cái mà người ta yêu - Mỹ Linh nghiêm khắc cảnh báo. Tưởng Giới Thạch nói thẳng vào vấn đề:
  • Anh ta mới chỉ là chồng chưa cưới của nàng. Tôi không làm điều gì vi phạm đạo đức. Nàng không thoát khỏi tôi đâu. Tôi nhìn thấy tâm sự của nàng, nàng có biết không? Tôi muốn thống nhất đất nước đang chia năm xẻ bảy của chúng ta. Tôi cần một người phụ nữ tốt giúp đỡ tôi và người đó là nàng. Lưu Kỷ Văn cao nhất chỉ có thể trở thành một học giả. Nàng là người thông minh, xin suy nghĩ cho kỹ!

Tháng 8/1927, do những mâu thuẫn dẫn đến công kích lẫn nhau giữa chính phủ Nam Kinh mà Tưởng đang cầm đầu và chính phủ Vũ Hán do Uông Tinh Vệ khống chế, Tưởng phải chịu nhiều áp lực trong Đảng. Với phương sách “lấy thoái để tiến”, Tưởng tuyên bố từ chức. Ngày 13/8, Tưởng dẫn hơn hai trăm thân tín rời Nam Kinh, qua Thượng Hải, Ninh Ba về quê hương Khê Khẩu, ngụ trong chùa Tuyết Đậu. Chính tại đây, trong thân phận kẻ “võ nhân bãi chức, dứt khỏi việc đời”, Tưởng đã viết cho người đẹp họ Tống một bức thư lời lẽ vô cùng tha thiết: “Lâu nay chỉ lo việc quân cơ, mà lòng vẫn luôn nghĩ đến người đẹp nghiêng thành, trên đời này chỉ có mình em… Năm qua chiến sự giao tranh ác liệt, cứ tự trách mình chỉ lo công việc. Bây giờ nghĩ lại, mơ tưởng tới dung nhan kiều diễm của em mà lòng yêu thương không sao kìm nén. Nhưng không biết ở nơi xa xôi, em có hiểu được lòng tôi?”.

Rồi ông nhún vai bảo rằng: “Nhưng công bằng mà nói, các ông đổ lỗi cho chính phủ, cho nhà nước của các ông nhiều quá”. Tôi hỏi: “Ông là người ngoại quốc, có thể ông có cái nhìn tinh tế hơn”? Ông ta lại nhún vai: “Cũng chẳng có gì đáng gọi là tinh tế cả. Phương ngôn Pháp của chúng tôi có câu: “Nhân dân nào, chính phủ nấy”. Các ông rất xứng đáng với chính phủ của các ông!”

Nói đến chữ “Tâm” tức là nói đến đạo đức xã hội, nói đến lòng người. Nhưng sụp đổ tinh thần sau bao năm chiến tranh, sau bao nhiêu sai lầm, tôi e rằng không bao giờ có thể xây dựng lại được. Đối với người Việt Nam, cái mất mát lớn nhất bây giờ là lòng tin. Giả sử bây giờ nếu có ngoại xâm lần nữa, tôi ngờ ít mấy ai sẵn sàng hy sinh tất cả, sẵn sàng đem hết tất cả những gì mình có ra làm chướng ngại vật chống chiến xa như hồi kháng chiến chống Pháp năm 1946. Người ta đã qua nhiều lần hy vọng rồi lại thất vọng, nên nếu ngay như bây giờ có một minh quân xuất hiện thì chả có mấy ai tin.