Quote

In my particular case foreign policy happens to be my hobby, my consuming interest. I had spent decades studying it.

Henry A. Kissinger

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Henry A. Kissinger
Policy
Hobbies
Particular
Consuming
Study
Studying
Interest
Foreign
Happens
Decades
Spent
Case
Cases
Hobby

More quotes by 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
Intelligence is not all that important in the exercise of power, and is often, in point of fact, useless.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
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.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
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
Image
The emergence of a unified Europe is one of the most revolutionary events of our time.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
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.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.
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
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
At any rate, mutually assured destruction was never our policy.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Why should we flagellate ourselves for what the Cambodians did to each other?
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
Many of the scientists have believed that their contribution to ending the nuclear race is not to let any new weapons to be developed.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
There is no realism without an element of idealism.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
The essence of Richard Nixon is loneliness.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
I know Hillary Clinton as a person. And as a personal friend, I would say yes, she'd be a good president. But she'd put me under a great conflict of interest if she were a candidate because I intend to support the Republicans.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
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