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If I should ever be captured, I want no negotiation - and if I should request a negotiation from captivity they should consider that a sign of duress.

Henry A. Kissinger

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Henry A. Kissinger
Duress
Captivity
Negotiation
Request
Captured
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Consider
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More quotes by Henry A. Kissinger

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Withdrawal of US troops will become like salted peanuts to the American public: The more US troops come home, the more will be demanded.
Henry A. Kissinger
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The Gorbachev period is conceived as an abandonment of historic Russian positions. So this is the framework, in my view, in which Putin operates.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Diplomats operate through deadlock, which is the way by which two sides can test each other's determination. Even if they have egos for it few heads of government have the time to resolve stalemates, their meetings are too short and the demands of protocol too heavy.
Henry A. Kissinger
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High office teaches decision making, not substance. It consumes intellectual capital it does not create it. Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered they learn how to make decisions but not what decisions to make.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Left to its own devices, the State Department machinery tends toward inertia rather than creativity it is always on the verge of turning itself into an enormous cable machine.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Democracy is too important to leave up to the votes of the people.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Whenever a new president comes in, people that are used to the previous president wonder if he has the same capacity.
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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No foreign policy - no matter how ingenious - has any chance of success if it is born in the minds of a few and carried in the hearts of none.
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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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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We must learn to distinguish morality from moralizing.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Oil is much too important a commodity to be left in the hands of the Arabs.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Realism in foreign policy means careful consideration of all aspects pertinent to the issue, before taking a decision. This is the only way you can move from where you are to someplace else.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Committees are consumers and sometimes sterilizers of ideas, rarely creators of them.
Henry A. Kissinger
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The capacity to admire others is not my most fully developed trait.
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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Statesman create ordinary leaders consume. The ordinary leader is satisfied with ameliorating the environment, not transforming it a statesman must be a visionary and an educator.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Before there was the Soviet Union that could inflame matters. Now you have states not as powerful as the Soviet Union, but states like Iraq, like Iran, and to some extent Syria, having made it possible for some of these groups to operate. So it is a very difficult situation.
Henry A. Kissinger
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University politics make me long for the simplicity of the Middle East.
Henry A. Kissinger