Michael Mandelbaum quotes

Societies raise their grandest monuments to what their cultures value most highly. As the tallest buildings in a city noted for tall buildings, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were certainly monumental. (Michael Mandelbaum)
After all, the past is our only real guide to the future, and historical analogies are instruments for distilling and organizing the past and converting it to a map by which we can navigate. View quote
Michael Mandelbaum
American foreign policy, for all its shortcomings, has underpinned political stability around the world. View quote
Michael Mandelbaum
The cardinal sin in sports, what could really wreck it, is not cheating to win, which has gone on forever, but cheating to lose. That threatens a fundamental aspect of sports' appeal, which is their spontaneity. If games are fixed, they're no different from movies; they're scripted. View quote
Michael Mandelbaum
Football is controlled violence, but it is violence, which people have loved to watch since the gladiatorial contests in ancient Rome. View quote
Michael Mandelbaum
Inequality of any kind, once considered a normal, natural part of human existence, came to be seen in the course of the twentieth century as increasingly illegitimate. View quote
Michael Mandelbaum
While analogies are useful, however, they can also be misleading. They smuggle in assumptions that can be wrong. View quote
Michael Mandelbaum
If architecture is, as is sometimes said, music set in concrete, then football and basketball may be said to be creativity embodied in team sports. View quote
Michael Mandelbaum
The American empire will not disappear... because America does not have an empire. View quote
Michael Mandelbaum
The less oil the world uses, the less important the region that has so much of it becomes. View quote
Michael Mandelbaum
American power confers benefits on most inhabitants of the planet, even on many who dislike it and some who actively oppose it, because the United States plays a major, constructive, and historically unprecedented role in the world. (Michael Mandelbaum)
To call the American role in the world imperial was, for many who did so, a way of asserting that the United States was misusing its power beyond its borders and, in so doing, subverting its founding political principles within them. View quote
Michael Mandelbaum
Economic growth is necessary to keep the promise - enormously important to individual Americans - that each generation will have the opportunity to become more prosperous than the preceding one, the popular term for which is 'the American dream.' View quote
Michael Mandelbaum
In the past when a country became as powerful as the United States, other countries would band together to clip its wings. But that isn't happening now and I don't think it's not going to happen, because other countries are not threatened by us, and they secretly appreciate the services that we provide, even if they don't usually say so. View quote
Michael Mandelbaum
The attacks of September 11, 2001, were spectacular, riveting, grim, costly and searing. The shock that they caused reverberated throughout the world. What happened in New York and Washington and Pennsylvania ended the lives of thousands of people and changed the lives of many more. But they did not change the world. View quote
Michael Mandelbaum
The government can give citizens opportunity and it's their responsibility to take advantage of it. View quote
Michael Mandelbaum
Let me remind you all that the first task of American foreign policy is to reduce threats to the United States. View quote
Michael Mandelbaum
The United States contributes to peace in both by serving as a buffer between and among regional powers that, while not preparing for armed conflict, do not fully trust one another. View quote
Michael Mandelbaum
Certainly, protecting oppressed people, stopping ethnic conflict and promoting responsible governance are worthy goals. But none is as important for American security and prosperity as keeping the peace in the Middle East, Europe and East Asia. View quote
Michael Mandelbaum
First of all, the world criticizes American foreign policy because Americans criticize American foreign policy. We shouldn't be surprised about that. Criticizing government is a God-given right - at least in democracies. View quote
Michael Mandelbaum
The American political system is so porous, it's so open, it's so frustrating for those who are trying to make policy. (Michael Mandelbaum)
All policy is a matter of gains and losses, upsides and downsides. View quote
Michael Mandelbaum
In my experience, it's not just that serious books get a hearing on comedy shows. But serious books get a serious hearing, as well as a funny one, on comedy shows. View quote
Michael Mandelbaum
The main division in the world is between democratic and undemocratic countries. View quote
Michael Mandelbaum
One thing worse than an America that is too strong, the world will learn, is an America that is too weak. View quote
Michael Mandelbaum