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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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Henry A. Kissinger
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More quotes by Henry A. Kissinger

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People are generally amazed that I would take an interest in any form that would require me to stop talking for three hours.
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Donald Trump is a phenomenon that foreign countries haven't seen.
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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.
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I believe in freedom of expression, and I believe that societies thrive when they permit freedom of expression.
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.
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The art of good foreign policy is to understand and to take into consideration the values of a society, to realize them at the outer limit of the possible.
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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No, [the U.S.] has made it clear that we consider a peaceful resolution an essential aspect of American foreign policy. This I believe to be a situation understood by China, but again, it is important to not sound too truculent. Taking on a billion-plus Chinese is not an enterprise which one should enter lightly.
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The capacity to admire others is not my most fully developed trait.
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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.
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He [Deng Xiaoping] said that he did not understand why we failed to grasp that the alternative was not democracy, but total chaos and risking all the reforms that had been achieved.
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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[Nixon] wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. He doesn't want to hear anything about it. It's an order, to be done. Anything that flies on anything that moves.
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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If we do what is necessary, all the odds are in our favor.
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 one will ever win the battle of the sexes there's too much fraternizing with the enemy.
Henry A. Kissinger
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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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An Iranian moderate is one who has run out of ammunition.
Henry A. Kissinger
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With proper tactics, nuclear war need not be as destructive as it appears.
Henry A. Kissinger