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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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More quotes by Henry A. Kissinger

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Almost every peace process that has gone on between the Arab side and Israel, the United States has been somewhat isolated because most of the countries in the world, what they really want is to accept the Arab peace plan or so-called peace plan, which in its present form would lead to the destruction of Israel.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision.
Henry A. Kissinger
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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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The essence of Richard Nixon is loneliness.
Henry A. Kissinger
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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
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If you control the food, you control a nation. If you control the energy, you control a region. If you control the money, you control the world.
Henry A. Kissinger
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One thing I don't want around me is a military intellectual. I don't have to worry about you on that score.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed. History is a tale of efforts that failed, or aspirations that weren’t realized. So, as a historian, one has to live with a sense of the inevitability of tragedy.
Henry A. Kissinger
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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
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I think China will do nothing to obstruct it, and they probably will go along with it.
Henry A. Kissinger
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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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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
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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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There is no realism without an element of idealism.
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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Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.
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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I want to thank you for stopping the applause. It is impossible for me to look humble for any period of time.
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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Every success is usually an admission ticket to a new set of decisions.
Henry A. Kissinger