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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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Henry A. Kissinger
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More quotes by Henry A. Kissinger

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Intelligence is not all that important in the exercise of power, and is often, in point of fact, useless.
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An Iranian moderate is one who has run out of ammunition.
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Committees are consumers and sometimes sterilizers of ideas, rarely creators of them.
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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.
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Let us fashion together a new world order.
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A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone.
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A bluff taken seriously is more useful than a serious threat interpreted as a bluff.
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John Paul II was one of the greatest men of the last century. Perhaps the greatest.
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In a nuclear war, even if one side were to come out ahead by systems analytical standards, both sides would be so weakened, that it would - they would be in the position of Europe after the two World Wars.
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University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.
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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.
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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.
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The Vietnam War required us to emphasize the national interest rather than abstract principles. What President Nixon and I tried to do was unnatural. And that is why we didn't make it.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Nixon had three goals: to win by the biggest electoral landslide in history to be remembered as a peacemaker and to be accepted by the 'Establishment' as an equal. He achieved all these objectives at the end of 1972 and the beginning of 1973. And he lost them all two months later-partly because he turned a dream into an obsession.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Realism in foreign policy means careful consideration of all aspects pertinent to the issue, before taking a decision. This is the only way you can move from where you are to someplace else.
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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Does anyone have any questions for my answers?
Henry A. Kissinger
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I also do not believe that the United States can let itself be driven into a political role by escalating terrorism, and therefore, the leaders of the Arab world and Arafat should do their utmost to put an end to this and then the United States should do its utmost to produce a political solution.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Power is the great aphrodisiac.
Henry A. Kissinger