Joseph Nye Quotes

American political scientist

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Joseph Samuel Nye, Jr. (January 19, 1937 – May 6, 2025) was an American political scientist. He and Robert Keohane co-founded the international relations theory of neoliberalism, which they developed in their 1977 book Power and Interdependence. Together with Keohane, he developed the concepts of asymmetrical and complex interdependence. They also explored transnational relations and world politics in an edited volume in the 1970s. More recently, he pioneered the theory of soft power and explained the distinction between it and hard power. His notion of "smart power" ("the ability to combine hard and soft power into a successful strategy") became popular with the use of this phrase by members of the Clinton Administration and the Obama Administration. Nye was the former Dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he held the position of University Distinguished Service Professor, Emeritus. In October 2014, Secretary of State John Kerry appointed Nye to the Foreign Affairs Policy Board. He was a member of the Harvard faculty since 1964. He was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and a foreign fellow of The British Academy. He was also a member of the American Academy of Diplomacy.

From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Birth Name: Joseph Samuel Nye Jr.

Alternative Names: Joseph Samuel Nye, Jr. • Joseph S. Nye, Jr. • Joseph S. Nye

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Systems can create consequences not intended by any other of their constituent actors.

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

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

At some point, consequences matter.

The cure to misunderstanding history is to read more, not less.

No one can tell the whole story of anything.

Cooperation is difficult in the absence of communication.

Any sense of global community is weak.

I have found in my experience in government that I could ignore neither the age-old nor the brand-new dimensions of world politics.

The world at the beginning of the twenty-first century is a strange cocktail of continuity and change. Some aspects of international politics have not changed since Thucydides. There is a certain logic of hostility, a dilemma about security that goes with interstate politics. Alliances, balance of power, and choices in in policy between war and compromise have remained similar over the millennia.

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

Effective foreign policymaking requires an understanding of not only international and transnational systems, but also the intricacies of domestic politics in multiple countries. It also demands recognition of just how little is known about “building nations,” particularly after revolutions – a process that should be viewed in terms of decades, not years.