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The art of good foreign policy is to understand and to take into consideration the values of a society, to realize them at the outer limit of the possible.

Henry A. Kissinger

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Henry A. Kissinger
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More quotes by Henry A. Kissinger

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We must learn to distinguish morality from moralizing.
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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In 10 years, there will be no more Israel.
Henry A. Kissinger
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At any rate, mutually assured destruction was never our policy.
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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Administration has managed the extraordinary feat of having, at one and the same time, the worst relations with our allies, the worst relations with our adversaries, and the most serious upheavals in the developing world since the end of the Second World War.
Henry A. Kissinger
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World population needs to be decreased by 50%
Henry A. Kissinger
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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
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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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In my particular case foreign policy happens to be my hobby, my consuming interest. I had spent decades studying it.
Henry A. Kissinger
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When I became security advisor, I became familiar with the so-called SIOP war plans, I called in Secretary McNamara and asked him what they were hiding from me, because I couldn't believe that the National policy would foresee such a level of destructiveness.
Henry A. Kissinger
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They [American forces] are there as an expression of the American national interest to prevent the Iranian combination of imperialism and fundamentalist ideology from dominating a region on which the energy supplies of the industrial democracies depend.
Henry A. Kissinger
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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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China has had a long and complex history and has managed to evolve its own culture for 4,000 years. It therefore not necessarily true that we know exactly what is best for the internal structure of China.
Henry A. Kissinger
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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
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Far too often the Ukrainian issue is posed as a showdown: whether Ukraine joins the East or the West. But if Ukraine is to survive and thrive, it must not be either side's outpost against the other - it should function as a bridge between them.
Henry A. Kissinger
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The true conservative is not at home in social struggle. He will attempt to avoid unbridgeable schism, because he knows that a stable social structure thrives not on triumphs but on reconciliations.
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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In the end, peace can be achieved only by hegemony or by balance of power.
Henry A. Kissinger
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To revolutionaries the significant reality is the world which they are fighting to bring about, not the world they are fighting to overcome.
Henry A. Kissinger