Warrior Politics Quotes

“In foreign policy, a modest acceptance of fate will often lead to discipline rather than indifference. The realization that we cannot always have our way is the basis of a mature outlook that rests on an ancient sensibility, for tragedy is not the triumph of evil over good so much as triumph of one good over another that causes suffering. Awareness of that fact leads to a sturdy morality grounded in fear as well as in hope. The moral benefits of fear bring us to two English philosophers who, like Machiavelli, have for centuries disturbed people of goodwill: Hobbes and Malthus.”
― Robert D. Kaplan, Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos

“the “sum of virtue,” Hobbes writes, “is to be sociable with them that will be sociable, and formidable to them that will not.”1”
― Robert D. Kaplan, Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos

“Like all wise men, he thought tragically: for we create moral standards in order to measure our own inadequacies.”
― Robert D. Kaplan, Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos