Joseph Nye Quotations

We appear to be turning to a conservative cycle in the major countries. President Bush's administration will find they have more allies, and this will be a big plus for them.

We live in a world of diverse cultures, and we know very little about social engineering and how to 'build nations.' And when we cannot be sure how to improve the world, hubristic visions pose a grave danger.

She did a good job of explaining what has been a veiled policy, ... She has a vision of democracy in the Middle East as a means of eliminating terrorism, but there is an inadequate roadmap for implementing that strategy. We just didn't hear about it.

She has enormously improved the Wilson School, ... I've said to my successor, you've got to look over your back.

getting people to sit in the back office and connect dots has not been their strong suit. Now they know they have to do it. The question is, Will they?

I think most Americans still hope for a peaceful and beneficial future with China. As (former) President (Bill) Clinton once said, we have more to fear from a poor weak China than from a rich and democratic China.

The government really needs to focus on recruiting people for their first job and first opportunity. Often, most people simply price themselves out of the market.

Transformational leaders are important because they make choices that most other leaders would not.

The resistance to globalization has a new quality today. You have populist leaders in developing countries who are empowered by high oil prices and you have a protectionist climate in the rich countries. The two trends reinforce each other and could slow globalization.

They're nice ideals, appropriate especially in this setting celebrating Woodrow Wilson, but they're not enough, ... The strategy wasn't there and it hasn't been there.

In recent years, both China and India have adopted foreign policies that have increased their attractiveness to others. But neither country yet ranks high on the various indices of potential soft-power resources that are possessed by the U.S., Europe and Japan.

the location of the server does not seem to give that much power.

His [Osama bin Laden]excessive use of terror, including numerous attacks that indiscriminately killed many women and children, and of course many Muslims, has hurt the attractiveness of his message.

Every politician just has to remember how he got his position in the first place. A young candidate running for Congress or any outsider interested in public office could only achieve his goals by relying on soft power. They could not force anyone to vote for them. They needed to convince their potential voters, they needed to do fundraising, they needed to be attractive candidates.

Terrorism is like jujitsu: The small players win if they make the large player use his strength against himself.

Leadership experts and the public alike extol the virtues of transformational leaders - those who set out bold objectives and take risks to change the world. We tend to downplay 'transactional' leaders, whose goals are more modest, as mere managers.

Democracy is the best school to learn soft power.

American power in the world relies on these ideals of openness and critical debate.

America should find its interests in ways which are more consistent with the interests of other countries, which are things that are good for us but also good for others. That will make Americans exporters of hope again, not exporters of fear.

Money and donations are an important part of our political system. They are hard power.

The national interest is predetermined by geopolitics or the history of a country. Important political leaders never just followed their interests - they were concerned about the interests of their people.

Power is the ability to affect others to get the outcomes you want, and that can be done by coercion, payment or attraction.

America rests on shared values rather than shared ethnicity.

In the information age, it's not just whose army wins, but whose story wins.

As we think of power in the 21st century, we want to get away from the idea that power’s always zero sum — my gain is your loss and vice versa. Power can also be positive sum, where your gain can be my gain.