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The first reactions are often instinctive. So one of the first things we said was that the Chinese had no right to inspect the plane, and that we had a sovereign right to. I don't know what the legal position is, but it was surely psychologically absolutely the unwise thing to do.

Henry A. Kissinger

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Henry A. Kissinger
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More quotes by Henry A. Kissinger

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Let me make my point about Vietnam. When the Nixon initiation came into office, there were 550,000 Americans in combat. And ending the war was not a question of turning off a television channel. And so, debating on how we got there and what judgments were made was not going to help us.
Henry A. Kissinger
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We must learn to distinguish morality from moralizing.
Henry A. Kissinger
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For the Soul of France is masterful history, brilliantly researched, and hard to put down.
Henry A. Kissinger
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The American formal position has been that we oppose violence by governments against their people. That principle should not be abandoned.
Henry A. Kissinger
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If you control the oil you control the country if you control food, you control the population.
Henry A. Kissinger
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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.
Henry A. Kissinger
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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
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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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The US must carry out some act somewhere in the world which shows its determination to continue to be a world power.
Henry A. Kissinger
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No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time.
Henry A. Kissinger
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We cannot give Russia veto over deployment of forces on NATO territory. But we have to understand their particular sensitivities, and, therefore, there should be a dialogue on these issues.
Henry A. Kissinger
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I go out with actresses because I'm not apt to marry one.
Henry A. Kissinger
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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
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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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This country cannot afford to tear itself apart on a partisan basis on issues so vital to our national security.
Henry A. Kissinger
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The Chinese, on the other hand, were in the position of having an American military spy plane on a Chinese military base and they had their own internal problems to deal with. At first, the Chinese weren't all that belligerent. They were just stalling to get their own bureaucracy in line.
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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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
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I believe that without Watergate we would have had an extraordinary period of success with a strong Nixon and a still vital Brezhnev in power.
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