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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
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More quotes by Henry A. Kissinger

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I think an appeal to American idealism and willingness to sacrifice would be an important contribution, because what is happening now in many countries, not yet in the United States, but in many European countries, it's the inability of government to ask for sacrifices of its people.
Henry A. Kissinger
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We have to be careful in negotiating with Iran that we don't create the impression among the Arab states and the Sunni states that we are working on a condominium between Iran and the United States, because that will panic them and drive them into making their own arrangement.
Henry A. Kissinger
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In a nuclear war, even if one side were to come out ahead by systems analytical standards, both sides would be so weakened, that it would - they would be in the position of Europe after the two World Wars.
Henry A. Kissinger
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No one will ever win the battle of the sexes there's too much fraternizing with the enemy.
Henry A. Kissinger
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A return to the 1967 lines and the abandonment of the settlements near Jerusalem would be such a psychological trauma for Israel as to endanger its survival.
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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Well, he keeps saying that, and as defense secretary, of course he has to think of a lot of potential enemies. I do not think it's a wise course to articulate this or to base our policy on it. And I do not see under modern circumstances what we would be fighting about.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.
Henry A. Kissinger
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It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Does anyone have any questions for my answers?
Henry A. Kissinger
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John Paul II was one of the greatest men of the last century. Perhaps the greatest.
Henry A. Kissinger
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It is not often that nations learn from the past even rarer that they draw the correct conclusions from it. For the lessons of historical experience, as of personal experience, are contingent. They teach the consequences of certain actions, but they cannot force a recognition of comparable situations.
Henry A. Kissinger
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You're 18 points down [in the polls]... You might as well do what's right.
Henry A. Kissinger
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The idea of abstract power only exists for academics, not in real life.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Don't be too ambitious. Do the most important thing you can think of doing every year and then your career will take care of itself.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed.
Henry A. Kissinger
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You can't make war in the Middle East without Egypt and you can't make peace without Syria.
Henry A. Kissinger
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The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Obama is like a chess player who is playing simultaneous chess and has opened his game with an unusual opening.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Art is man's expression of his joy in labor.
Henry A. Kissinger