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The peace the President had made possible at Portsmouth was the result of just such an inexplicable ability to impose his singular charge upon plural power. By sheer force of moral purpose, by clarity of perception, by mastery of detail and benign manipulation of men, he had become, as Henry Adams admiringly wrote him, "the best herder of Emperors since Napoleon."
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Edmund Morris, in Theodore Rex? (2001), p. 414.

 

Theodore Roosevelt

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My dear Roosevelt
You have established a record as the best herder of Emperors since Napoleon. I should long ago have written you my gratitude had not men — and women — taught me to hold my tongue before my betters. On public affairs I am still a scholar, not a professor; and when I think I know enough to help you, I will do it … You have taught us how to herd Emperors, but also you have shown that, of all cattle, Emperors are most easily herded.

 

Theodore Roosevelt

 

Mr. President, you did a great thing. You gave up your post as general secretary of the Soviet Union, but now you have become the president of peace. Because of your wisdom and courage, we now have the possibility to bring world peace. You did the most important, eternal, and beautiful thing for the world. You are the hero of peace who did God's work. The name that will be remembered forever in the history of Russia will not be "Marx," or "Lenin," or "Stalin." it will be "Mikhail Gorbachev."

 

Mikhail Gorbachev

 

A man's power and intelligence are limited. He who wants to do everything will never do anything. Only too well do we know those people of uncertain ability who say: "I could be a great musician."..."Business would be easy for me."..."I could surely make success in politics." We may be certain that they will always be amateur musicians, failures in business, and beaten politicians. Napoleon held that the art of war consisted of making oneself strongest at a certain point; in life we must choose a point of attack and concentrate our forces there. The choice of a career must not be left to chance.

 

Andre Maurois

 

So many forces and resources would become available if States, aware (or conscious) of their true (or real) mission, would want to get on (or agree) to abolish every politics aiming at ("visant ?", Fr.) expansion or hegemony; system that maintain among nations a a perpetual distrust and tension, impose on them (or force or compel, "leur impose", Fr.) formidable armies and crushing war budgets.

 

African Spir

 

Any schoolboy could see that man as a force must be measured by motion, from a fixed point. Psychology helped here by suggesting a unit — the point of history when man held the highest idea of himself as a unit in a unified universe. Eight or ten years of study had led Adams to think he might use the century 1150-1250, expressed in Amiens Cathedral and the Works of Thomas Aquinas, as the unit from which he might measure motion down to his own time, without assuming anything as true or untrue, except relation. The movement might be studied at once in philosophy and mechanics. Setting himself to the task, he began a volume which he mentally knew as "Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres: a Study of Thirteenth-Century Unity." From that point he proposed to fix a position for himself, which he could label: "The Education of Henry Adams: a Study of Twentieth-Century Multiplicity." With the help of these two points of relation, he hoped to project his lines forward and backward indefinitely, subject to correction from any one who should know better. Thereupon, he sailed for home.

 

Henry Adams