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Left to its own devices, the State Department machinery tends toward inertia rather than creativity it is always on the verge of turning itself into an enormous cable machine.

Henry A. Kissinger

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Henry A. Kissinger
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More quotes by Henry A. Kissinger

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No, [the U.S.] has made it clear that we consider a peaceful resolution an essential aspect of American foreign policy. This I believe to be a situation understood by China, but again, it is important to not sound too truculent. Taking on a billion-plus Chinese is not an enterprise which one should enter lightly.
Henry A. Kissinger
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What we in America call terrorists are really groups of people that reject the international system
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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The history of things that didn't happen has never been written.
Henry A. Kissinger
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I believe it is a mistake to isolate arms control from other areas of policy.
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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In my particular case foreign policy happens to be my hobby, my consuming interest. I had spent decades studying it.
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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University politics make me long for the simplicity of the Middle East.
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 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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The greatest need of the contemporary international system is an agreed concept of order.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately.
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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President Nixon in his inaugural address indicated that he wanted an era of negotiation. Our reasoning was that whatever our ideological differences, whatever our geopolitical differences, we were condemned to coexistence by nuclear weapons.
Henry A. Kissinger
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In a diplomatic negotiation, you always meet the same the other side all the time. Even if you should succeed in outsmarting him or in pressuring him, it only sets up a cycle in which he will try to get even.
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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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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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
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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