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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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The British capitalize on their accent when they don't want you to know what they're saying. But if you wake them up at 4 A.M., they speak perfect English, the same as we do.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed.
Henry A. Kissinger
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We cannot give Russia veto over deployment of forces on NATO territory. But we have to understand their particular sensitivities, and, therefore, there should be a dialogue on these issues.
Henry A. Kissinger
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I see the future of China as growth. I think that historically China has often gone through periods of consolidation, and then periods of sort of weakening central authority. They undoubtedly face tremendous challenges.
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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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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No foreign policy - no matter how ingenious - has any chance of success if it is born in the minds of a few and carried in the hearts of none.
Henry A. Kissinger
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I believe that without Watergate we would have had an extraordinary period of success with a strong Nixon and a still vital Brezhnev in power.
Henry A. Kissinger
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I don't read books, I write them.
Henry A. Kissinger
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A return to the 1967 lines and the abandonment of the settlements near Jerusalem would be such a psychological trauma for Israel as to endanger its survival.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Power is the great aphrodisiac.
Henry A. Kissinger
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There is no realism without an element of idealism.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Every success is usually an admission ticket to a new set of decisions.
Henry A. Kissinger
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You're 18 points down [in the polls]... You might as well do what's right.
Henry A. Kissinger
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History is not, of course, a cookbook offering pretested recipes. It teaches by analogy, not by maxims. It can illuminate the consequences of actions in comparable situations, yet each generation must discover for itself what situations are in fact comparable.
Henry A. Kissinger
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An Iranian moderate is one who has run out of ammunition.
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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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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We have three things in common: Irish wives, the ability to speak for 17 minutes without a verb, and the fact that we both speak with an accent.
Henry A. Kissinger
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In relations with many domestically weak countries, a radio transmitter can be a more effective form of pressure than a squadron B-52s.
Henry A. Kissinger