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The real distinction is between those who adapt their purposes to reality and those who seek to mold reality in the light of their purposes.

Henry A. Kissinger

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Henry A. Kissinger
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More quotes by Henry A. Kissinger

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Let us fashion together a new world order.
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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In the 1960s, I would have considered China with its CPC an ideologically more dynamic country than the Soviet Union. But the Soviet Union was strategically more threatening.
Henry A. Kissinger
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The greatest need of the contemporary international system is an agreed concept of order.
Henry A. Kissinger
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The problem is Russia is a country that has lost 300 years of its history, in terms of most of what was part of the Russian Empire in Europe, towards Europe, since Peter the Great, has been the territory that is no longer under Russian rule.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Baseball is the most intellectual game because most of the action goes on in your head.
Henry A. Kissinger
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In my particular case foreign policy happens to be my hobby, my consuming interest. I had spent decades studying it.
Henry A. Kissinger
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I go out with actresses because I'm not apt to marry one.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Realism in foreign policy is made up of a clear set of values, since difficult foreign policy decisions are often decided with the narrowest of majorities. Without any sense of what is right and wrong, one would drown in a flood of difficult and pragmatic decisions.
Henry A. Kissinger
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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
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Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.
Henry A. Kissinger
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The test of policy is how it ends, not how it begins. Foreign policy is the art of establishing priorities. Demonization is not a policy it is an alibi for the absence of one. The test is not absolute satisfaction but balanced dissatisfaction.
Henry A. Kissinger
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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
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In a diplomatic negotiation, you always meet the same the other side all the time. Even if you should succeed in outsmarting him or in pressuring him, it only sets up a cycle in which he will try to get even.
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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We must learn to distinguish morality from moralizing.
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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University politics make me long for the simplicity of the Middle East.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Iraq has to be made an international, and not just a national American problem.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Let me make my point about Vietnam. When the Nixon initiation came into office, there were 550,000 Americans in combat. And ending the war was not a question of turning off a television channel. And so, debating on how we got there and what judgments were made was not going to help us.
Henry A. Kissinger