Quote

University politics make me long for the simplicity of the Middle East.

Henry A. Kissinger

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Henry A. Kissinger
Make
Simplicity
University
Mathematics
East
Middle
Politics
Science
Long

More quotes by Henry A. Kissinger

Image
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
Image
The emergence of a unified Europe is one of the most revolutionary events of our time.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
Diplomats operate through deadlock, which is the way by which two sides can test each other's determination. Even if they have egos for it few heads of government have the time to resolve stalemates, their meetings are too short and the demands of protocol too heavy.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
Historically when there is a rising power like China, it has usually led to confrontations between the rising power and the existing dominant powers. And when you have a shift of the center of gravity of world affairs from the Atlantic to the Pacific, then you have an additional element.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
The defining issue is that the government in Taiwan was considered to be the government of all of China, and the authorities in Beijing were not recognized as a government of China. So Taiwan was the residuary for all of China.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
With proper tactics, nuclear war need not be as destructive as it appears.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
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
Image
The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
We must learn to distinguish morality from moralizing.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
One thing I don't want around me is a military intellectual. I don't have to worry about you on that score.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
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
Image
A little uncertainty is good for everyone.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
In the 1960s, I would have considered China with its CPC an ideologically more dynamic country than the Soviet Union. But the Soviet Union was strategically more threatening.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
If eighty percent of your sales come from twenty percent of all of your items, just carry those twenty percent.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
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
Image
One theory is that we will make war look so attractive that we undermine the deterrent. That's Never Never Land. What we have now would have been enough to deter Hitler. But we are talking in a different order of reality.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
To be an enemy of America can be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
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
Image
The American foreign policy trauma of the sixties and seventies was caused by applying valid principles to unsuitable conditions.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
In the hands of a determined Secretary, the Foreign Service can be a splendid instrument, staffed by knowledgeable, discreet, and energetic individuals. They do require constant vigilance lest the convictions that led them into a penurious career tempt them to preempt decision-making.
Henry A. Kissinger