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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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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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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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The Vietnam War required us to emphasize the national interest rather than abstract principles. What President Nixon and I tried to do was unnatural. And that is why we didn't make it.
Henry A. Kissinger
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America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.
Henry A. Kissinger
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A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone.
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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Leaders are responsible not for running public opinion polls but for the consequences of their actions.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Access to natural resources can become a question of survival for many states.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Intellectuals are cynical and cynics have never built a cathedral.
Henry A. Kissinger
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90% of politicians give the other 10% a bad name.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
Henry A. Kissinger
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It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise.
Henry A. Kissinger
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You're 18 points down [in the polls]... You might as well do what's right.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Power is the great aphrodisiac.
Henry A. Kissinger
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University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.
Henry A. Kissinger
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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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Almost every peace process that has gone on between the Arab side and Israel, the United States has been somewhat isolated because most of the countries in the world, what they really want is to accept the Arab peace plan or so-called peace plan, which in its present form would lead to the destruction of Israel.
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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If we do what is necessary, all the odds are in our favor.
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