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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
The Gorbachev period is conceived as an abandonment of historic Russian positions. So this is the framework, in my view, in which Putin operates.
Henry A. Kissinger
University politics make me long for the simplicity of the Middle East.
Henry A. Kissinger
Becoming conscious is of course a sacrilege against nature it is as though you had robbed the unconscious of something. The nice thing about being a celebrity is that if you bore people they think it's their fault.
Henry A. Kissinger
Intellectuals are cynical and cynics have never built a cathedral.
Henry A. Kissinger
The test of policy is how it ends, not how it begins. Foreign policy is the art of establishing priorities. Demonization is not a policy it is an alibi for the absence of one. The test is not absolute satisfaction but balanced dissatisfaction.
Henry A. Kissinger
No one will ever win the battle of the sexes there's too much fraternizing with the enemy.
Henry A. Kissinger
I can think of no faster way to unite the American people behind George W. Bush than a terrorist attack on an American target overseas. And I believe George W. Bush will quickly unite the American people through his foreign policy.
Henry A. Kissinger
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
In a diplomatic negotiation, you always meet the same the other side all the time. Even if you should succeed in outsmarting him or in pressuring him, it only sets up a cycle in which he will try to get even.
Henry A. Kissinger
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
I believe in freedom of expression, and I believe that societies thrive when they permit freedom of expression.
Henry A. Kissinger
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
You can't make war in the Middle East without Egypt and you can't make peace without Syria.
Henry A. Kissinger
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
History knows no resting places and no plateaus
Henry A. Kissinger
High office teaches decision making, not substance. It consumes intellectual capital it does not create it. Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered they learn how to make decisions but not what decisions to make.
Henry A. Kissinger
Leaders are responsible not for running public opinion polls but for the consequences of their actions.
Henry A. Kissinger
I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.
Henry A. Kissinger
If we do what is necessary, all the odds are in our favor.
Henry A. Kissinger
Committees are consumers and sometimes sterilizers of ideas, rarely creators of them.
Henry A. Kissinger
