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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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Henry A. Kissinger
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More quotes by Henry A. Kissinger

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Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately.
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John Paul II was one of the greatest men of the last century. Perhaps the greatest.
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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.
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I don't read books, I write them.
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Why should we flagellate ourselves for what the Cambodians did to each other?
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Don't be too ambitious. Do the most important thing you can think of doing every year and then your career will take care of itself.
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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.
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For the Soul of France is masterful history, brilliantly researched, and hard to put down.
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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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.
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American politics are normally a result of pragmatic and not philosophical reasoning. No one in Washington has said we now prefer multilateralism.
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.
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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
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If we do what is necessary, all the odds are in our favor.
Henry A. Kissinger
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At any rate, mutually assured destruction was never our policy.
Henry A. Kissinger
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The nuclear weapons were not useful for the achievement of political objectives.
Henry A. Kissinger
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We have to be careful in negotiating with Iran that we don't create the impression among the Arab states and the Sunni states that we are working on a condominium between Iran and the United States, because that will panic them and drive them into making their own arrangement.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Let me make my point about Vietnam. When the Nixon initiation came into office, there were 550,000 Americans in combat. And ending the war was not a question of turning off a television channel. And so, debating on how we got there and what judgments were made was not going to help us.
Henry A. Kissinger
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It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Democracy is too important to leave up to the votes of the people.
Henry A. Kissinger