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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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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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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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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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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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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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Democracy is too important to leave up to the votes of the people.
Henry A. Kissinger
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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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The nice thing about being a celebrity is that, if you bore people, they think it's their fault.
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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The real distinction is between those who adapt their purposes to reality and those who seek to mold reality in the light of their purposes.
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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You're 18 points down [in the polls]... You might as well do what's right.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Competing pressures tempt one to believe that an issue deferred is a problem avoided more often it is a crisis invited.
Henry A. Kissinger
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The American foreign policy trauma of the sixties and seventies was caused by applying valid principles to unsuitable conditions.
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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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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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.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Any international system must have two key elements for it to work. One, it has to have a certain equilibrium of power that makes overthrowing the system difficult and costly. Secondly, it has to have a sense of legitimacy.
Henry A. Kissinger
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A nation riven by factions, in which the minority has no hope of ever becoming a majority, or in which some group knows it is perpetually outcast, will seem oppressive to its members, whatever the legal pretensions.
Henry A. Kissinger