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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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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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Oil is much too important a commodity to be left in the hands of the Arabs.
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Baseball is the most intellectual game because most of the action goes on in your head.
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High office teaches decision making, not substance. It consumes intellectual capital it does not create it. Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered they learn how to make decisions but not what decisions to make.
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The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself.
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If eighty percent of your sales come from twenty percent of all of your items, just carry those twenty percent.
Henry A. Kissinger
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I would have said, before the World Trade Center events, that he would try to get a normal relationship with China - making clear to China what the limits are of what America can accept, but also showing understanding for some of Chinese necessities. I thought he was moving towards the position that I have more or less advocated.
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.
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The American formal position has been that we oppose violence by governments against their people. That principle should not be abandoned.
Henry A. Kissinger
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It is not often that nations learn from the past even rarer that they draw the correct conclusions from it. For the lessons of historical experience, as of personal experience, are contingent. They teach the consequences of certain actions, but they cannot force a recognition of comparable situations.
Henry A. Kissinger
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The important thing is to do the right thing. Then credibility will follow.
Henry A. Kissinger
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The capacity to admire others is not my most fully developed trait.
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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You can't make war in the Middle East without Egypt and you can't make peace without Syria.
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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For any student of history, change is the law of life. Any attempt to contain it guarantees an explosion down the road the more rigid the adherence to the status quo, the more violent the ultimate outcome will be.
Henry A. Kissinger
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No one will ever win the battle of the sexes there's too much fraternizing with the enemy.
Henry A. Kissinger
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I don't read books, I write them.
Henry A. Kissinger
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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
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[The New World Order] cannot happen without U.S. participation, as we are the most significant single component. Yes, there will be a New World Order, and it will force the United States to change it's perceptions.
Henry A. Kissinger