Joseph Nye Quotes

Power conversion is the capacity to convert potential power, as measured by resources, to realized power, as measured by the changed behavior of others.

Chamberlain's sins were not his intentions, but rather his ignorance and arrogance in failing to appraise the situation properly. And in that failure he was not alone.

Humans sometimes make surprising choices, and human history is full of uncertainties.

Power, like love, is easier to experience than to define or measure.

In foreign policy, as in medicine, leaders must “first do no harm.”

Anarchy means without government, but it does not necessarily mean chaos or total disorder.

The best hope for the future is to ask what is being determined as well as who determines it.

Some observers feel it is harder to change public opinion in democracies than it is to change policies in totalitarian countries.

Just as gunpowder and infantry penetrated and destroyed the medieval castle, so have nuclear missiles and the internet made the nation-state obsolete.

Cooperation is difficult in the absence of communication.

Some economists believe that the Great Depression of the 1930s was aggravated by bad monetary policy and lack of American leadership. Britain was too weak to maintain an open international economy, and the United States was not living up to its new responsibilities.

Some say precipitating events are like buses - they come along every ten minutes.

The bipolar world is over, but it not going to be replaced by a unipolar world empire that the United States controls alone. The world is already economically multipolar, and there will be a diffusion of power as the information revolution progresses, interdependence increases, and transnational actors become more important. The new world will not be neat, and you will have to live with that.

At some point, consequences matter.

The international system consists not only of states. The international political system is the pattern of relationships among the states.