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Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed.

Henry A. Kissinger

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Henry A. Kissinger
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More quotes by Henry A. Kissinger

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The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Intellectuals are cynical and cynics have never built a cathedral.
Henry A. Kissinger
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In the hands of a determined Secretary, the Foreign Service can be a splendid instrument, staffed by knowledgeable, discreet, and energetic individuals. They do require constant vigilance lest the convictions that led them into a penurious career tempt them to preempt decision-making.
Henry A. Kissinger
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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
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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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If you control the oil you control the country if you control food, you control the population.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Committees are consumers and sometimes sterilizers of ideas, rarely creators of them.
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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In my view, there's no doubt that the Soviets had infinitely greater trouble holding their structure together than we did.
Henry A. Kissinger
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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
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In the end, peace can be achieved only by hegemony or by balance of power.
Henry A. Kissinger
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The Israelis want security. The Arabs want dignity. And they consider the demands of each other as incompatible.
Henry A. Kissinger
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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
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Some of the critics viewed Vietnam as a morality play in which the wicked must be punished before the final curtain and where any attempt to salvage self-respect from the outcome compounded the wrong. I viewed it as a genuine tragedy. No one had a monopoly on anguish.
Henry A. Kissinger
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There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision.
Henry A. Kissinger
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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
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In my life, I have almost always been on the side of active foreign policy. But you need to know with whom you are cooperating. You need reliable partners.
Henry A. Kissinger
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The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself.
Henry A. Kissinger
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If peace is equated simply with the absence of war, it can become abject pacifism that turns the world over to the most ruthless.
Henry A. Kissinger