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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

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Henry A. Kissinger
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More quotes by Henry A. Kissinger

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With proper tactics, nuclear war need not be as destructive as it appears.
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Oil is much too important a commodity to be left in the hands of the Arabs.
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In the end, peace can be achieved only by hegemony or by balance of power.
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90% of politicians give the other 10% a bad name.
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While we should never give up our principles, we must also realize that we cannot maintain our principles unless we survive.
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Many of the scientists have believed that their contribution to ending the nuclear race is not to let any new weapons to be developed.
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I want to thank you for stopping the applause. It is impossible for me to look humble for any period of time.
Henry A. Kissinger
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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.
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For the Soul of France is masterful history, brilliantly researched, and hard to put down.
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You're 18 points down [in the polls]... You might as well do what's right.
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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.
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If you control the oil you control the country if you control food, you control the population.
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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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I don't think that that's a desirable option for us. Besides, it wouldn't work, because there are too many other countries that are willing to work economically with China. But I don't think the basic relationship depends on economics. It depends on a political understanding of what is required for peace in Asia.
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I think China will do nothing to obstruct it, and they probably will go along with it.
Henry A. Kissinger
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There is no realism without an element of idealism.
Henry A. Kissinger
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America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.
Henry A. Kissinger
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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
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The Israelis want security. The Arabs want dignity. And they consider the demands of each other as incompatible.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Power is the great aphrodisiac.
Henry A. Kissinger