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While we should never give up our principles, we must also realize that we cannot maintain our principles unless we survive.

Henry A. Kissinger

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Henry A. Kissinger
Must
Survive
Giving
Unless
Never
Realize
Principles
Realizing
Cannot
Also
Give
Maintain

More quotes by Henry A. Kissinger

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Some of the critics viewed Vietnam as a morality play in which the wicked must be punished before the final curtain and where any attempt to salvage self-respect from the outcome compounded the wrong. I viewed it as a genuine tragedy. No one had a monopoly on anguish.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed. History is a tale of efforts that failed, or aspirations that weren’t realized. So, as a historian, one has to live with a sense of the inevitability of tragedy.
Henry A. Kissinger
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I believe that without Watergate we would have had an extraordinary period of success with a strong Nixon and a still vital Brezhnev in power.
Henry A. Kissinger
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I want to thank you for stopping the applause. It is impossible for me to look humble for any period of time.
Henry A. Kissinger
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An Iranian moderate is one who has run out of ammunition.
Henry A. Kissinger
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[The New World Order] cannot happen without U.S. participation, as we are the most significant single component. Yes, there will be a New World Order, and it will force the United States to change it's perceptions.
Henry A. Kissinger
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No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time.
Henry A. Kissinger
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A leader who confines his role to his people's experience dooms himself to stagnation a leader who outstrips his people's experience runs the risk of not being understood.
Henry A. Kissinger
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This country cannot afford to tear itself apart on a partisan basis on issues so vital to our national security.
Henry A. Kissinger
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I don't have a brief for every single reaction of Israel, but I think it is important that the political negotiations occur free of the threat of terrorism.
Henry A. Kissinger
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I have always expressed respect for those people who make public declarations.
Henry A. Kissinger
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I grew up in Germany during the Nazi period, and I came to this country when I was 15. And then I had to work in a factory because we had no resources. And I went to night school. So, it was not a rational ambition for me to become a world statesman.
Henry A. Kissinger
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University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Becoming conscious is of course a sacrilege against nature it is as though you had robbed the unconscious of something. The nice thing about being a celebrity is that if you bore people they think it's their fault.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Why should we flagellate ourselves for what the Cambodians did to each other?
Henry A. Kissinger
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Henceforth the adequacy of any military establishment will be tested by its ability to preserve the peace.
Henry A. Kissinger
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The American foreign policy trauma of the sixties and seventies was caused by applying valid principles to unsuitable conditions.
Henry A. Kissinger
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In Asia, the nation state still is extremely vital, and of course, then in Africa, a whole new pattern is emerging because the states in Africa reflected the preferences of the colonial powers when they were established.
Henry A. Kissinger
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A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone.
Henry A. Kissinger
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We must learn to distinguish morality from moralizing.
Henry A. Kissinger