Quote

If peace is equated simply with the absence of war, it can become abject pacifism that turns the world over to the most ruthless.

Henry A. Kissinger

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Henry A. Kissinger
Patriotic
Absence
Simply
Turns
Peace
Equated
War
Pacifism
Become
Abject
World
Ruthless

More quotes by Henry A. Kissinger

Image
Intelligence is not all that important in the exercise of power, and is often, in point of fact, useless.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
The Vietnam War required us to emphasize the national interest rather than abstract principles. What President Nixon and I tried to do was unnatural. And that is why we didn't make it.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
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
Image
The US must carry out some act somewhere in the world which shows its determination to continue to be a world power.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
I think China will do nothing to obstruct it, and they probably will go along with it.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
The American foreign policy trauma of the sixties and seventies was caused by applying valid principles to unsuitable conditions.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
This country cannot afford to tear itself apart on a partisan basis on issues so vital to our national security.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
American politics are normally a result of pragmatic and not philosophical reasoning. No one in Washington has said we now prefer multilateralism.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
The idea of abstract power only exists for academics, not in real life.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
China is a country with a record of continuous self-government going back 4,000 years, the only society that has achieved this. One must start with the assumption that they must have learnt something about the requirements for survival, and it is not always to be assumed that we know it better than they do.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
The important thing is to do the right thing. Then credibility will follow.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
Leaders are responsible not for running public opinion polls but for the consequences of their actions.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
An Iranian moderate is one who has run out of ammunition.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
If you control the food, you control a nation. If you control the energy, you control a region. If you control the money, you control the world.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
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
Image
I don't think that that's a desirable option for us. Besides, it wouldn't work, because there are too many other countries that are willing to work economically with China. But I don't think the basic relationship depends on economics. It depends on a political understanding of what is required for peace in Asia.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
I was always convinced that decent people in the case of Vietnam, highly intelligent, decent people, got us involved because they had made, in part, a misjudgment about the nature of the communist system and the unity of the communist world and the degree to which the experience of Europe could be repeated in Vietnam.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
The first reactions are often instinctive. So one of the first things we said was that the Chinese had no right to inspect the plane, and that we had a sovereign right to. I don't know what the legal position is, but it was surely psychologically absolutely the unwise thing to do.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
Why should we flagellate ourselves for what the Cambodians did to each other?
Henry A. Kissinger