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It is one of history's ironies that Communism, advertised as a classless society, tended to breed a privileged class of feudal proportions.

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 don't read books, I write them.
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Far too often the Ukrainian issue is posed as a showdown: whether Ukraine joins the East or the West. But if Ukraine is to survive and thrive, it must not be either side's outpost against the other - it should function as a bridge between them.
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Iraq has to be made an international, and not just a national American problem.
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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.
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I would have said, before the World Trade Center events, that he would try to get a normal relationship with China - making clear to China what the limits are of what America can accept, but also showing understanding for some of Chinese necessities. I thought he was moving towards the position that I have more or less advocated.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Leaders are responsible not for running public opinion polls but for the consequences of their actions.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Every success is usually an admission ticket to a new set of decisions.
Henry A. Kissinger
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With proper tactics, nuclear war need not be as destructive as it appears.
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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I see the future of China as growth. I think that historically China has often gone through periods of consolidation, and then periods of sort of weakening central authority. They undoubtedly face tremendous challenges.
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.
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I do not criticize people who take a public stand on human rights issues. I express my respect for them. But some people are more influential without a public confrontation.
Henry A. Kissinger
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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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A nation riven by factions, in which the minority has no hope of ever becoming a majority, or in which some group knows it is perpetually outcast, will seem oppressive to its members, whatever the legal pretensions.
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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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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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
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In my view, there's no doubt that the Soviets had infinitely greater trouble holding their structure together than we did.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Accept everything about yourself - I mean everything, You are you and that is the beginning and the end - no apologies, no regrets.
Henry A. Kissinger
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The history of things that didn't happen has never been written.
Henry A. Kissinger