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Intellectuals are cynical and cynics have never built a cathedral.

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 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.
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Does anyone have any questions for my answers?
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It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise.
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U.S. policy toward the third world should be one of depopulation
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An Iranian moderate is one who has run out of ammunition.
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90% of politicians give the other 10% a bad name.
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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
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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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We have three things in common: Irish wives, the ability to speak for 17 minutes without a verb, and the fact that we both speak with an accent.
Henry A. Kissinger
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I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Henceforth the adequacy of any military establishment will be tested by its ability to preserve the peace.
Henry A. Kissinger
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For the Soul of France is masterful history, brilliantly researched, and hard to put down.
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When I became security advisor, I became familiar with the so-called SIOP war plans, I called in Secretary McNamara and asked him what they were hiding from me, because I couldn't believe that the National policy would foresee such a level of destructiveness.
Henry A. Kissinger
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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
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The emergence of a unified Europe is one of the most revolutionary events of our time.
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.
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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The convictions that leaders have formed before reaching high office are the intellectual capital they will consume as long as they continue in office.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Oil is much too important a commodity to be left in the hands of the Arabs.
Henry A. Kissinger
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The Chinese, on the other hand, were in the position of having an American military spy plane on a Chinese military base and they had their own internal problems to deal with. At first, the Chinese weren't all that belligerent. They were just stalling to get their own bureaucracy in line.
Henry A. Kissinger