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A bluff taken seriously is more useful than a serious threat interpreted as a bluff.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Henry A. Kissinger
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More quotes by Henry A. Kissinger
The idea of abstract power only exists for academics, not in real life.
Henry A. Kissinger
90% of politicians give the other 10% a bad name.
Henry A. Kissinger
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
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
I grew up as a discriminated minority in a dictatorship, so obviously the issue of human rights is a matter of concern for me.
Henry A. Kissinger
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
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
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.
Henry A. Kissinger
Peace depends ultimately not on political arrangements but on the conscience of mankind.
Henry A. Kissinger
There is no realism without an element of idealism.
Henry A. Kissinger
A leader who confines his role to his people's experience dooms himself to stagnation a leader who outstrips his people's experience runs the risk of not being understood.
Henry A. Kissinger
If you mean by military victory an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible.
Henry A. Kissinger
America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.
Henry A. Kissinger
The nuclear weapons were not useful for the achievement of political objectives.
Henry A. Kissinger
U.S. policy toward the third world should be one of depopulation
Henry A. Kissinger
With proper tactics, nuclear war need not be as destructive as it appears.
Henry A. Kissinger
Clearly security without values is like a ship without a rudder. But values without security are like a rudder without a ship.
Henry A. Kissinger
If we do what is necessary, all the odds are in our favor.
Henry A. Kissinger
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
The British capitalize on their accent when they don't want you to know what they're saying. But if you wake them up at 4 A.M., they speak perfect English, the same as we do.
Henry A. Kissinger