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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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Henry A. Kissinger
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More quotes by Henry A. Kissinger

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The greatest need of the contemporary international system is an agreed concept of order.
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In my particular case foreign policy happens to be my hobby, my consuming interest. I had spent decades studying it.
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Oil is much too important a commodity to be left in the hands of the Arabs.
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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.
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Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.
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Donald Trump is a phenomenon that foreign countries haven't seen.
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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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Baseball is the most intellectual game because most of the action goes on in your head.
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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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.
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A leader who confines his role to his people's experience dooms himself to stagnation a leader who outstrips his people's experience runs the risk of not being understood.
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The US must carry out some act somewhere in the world which shows its determination to continue to be a world power.
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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.
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University politics make me long for the simplicity of the Middle East.
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The essence of Richard Nixon is loneliness.
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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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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
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It is one of history's ironies that Communism, advertised as a classless society, tended to breed a privileged class of feudal proportions.
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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The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.
Henry A. Kissinger