Quote

I do not criticize people who take a public stand on human rights issues. I express my respect for them. But some people are more influential without a public confrontation.

Henry A. Kissinger

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Henry A. Kissinger
People
Stand
Issues
Public
Rights
Confrontation
Human
Influential
Humans
Criticize
Without
Express
Take
Respect

More quotes by Henry A. Kissinger

Image
With respect to the relationship between nuclear weapons and the advent of détente, one has to consider two things. One, the nature of nuclear weapons in themselves, and secondly, the advent of nuclear parity.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
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
Image
If you do not know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
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.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
If you mean by military victory an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
In the end, peace can be achieved only by hegemony or by balance of power.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
The nice thing about being a celebrity is that, if you bore people, they think it's their fault.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
I was always convinced that decent people in the case of Vietnam, highly intelligent, decent people, got us involved because they had made, in part, a misjudgment about the nature of the communist system and the unity of the communist world and the degree to which the experience of Europe could be repeated in Vietnam.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
If you control the food, you control a nation. If you control the energy, you control a region. If you control the money, you control the world.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
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
Image
Committees are consumers and sometimes sterilizers of ideas, rarely creators of them.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
I have always expressed respect for those people who make public declarations.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
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
Image
You're 18 points down [in the polls]... You might as well do what's right.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
I don't read books, I write them.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
I think an appeal to American idealism and willingness to sacrifice would be an important contribution, because what is happening now in many countries, not yet in the United States, but in many European countries, it's the inability of government to ask for sacrifices of its people.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
For the Soul of France is masterful history, brilliantly researched, and hard to put down.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
Competing pressures tempt one to believe that an issue deferred is a problem avoided more often it is a crisis invited.
Henry A. Kissinger