Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Henry A. Kissinger
Absolutely
Psychologically
Position
Plane
Often
Sovereign
Firsts
Legal
First
Planes
Right
Surely
Inspect
Thing
Reactions
Unwise
Things
Chinese
Instinctive

More quotes by Henry A. Kissinger

Image
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
Image
A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
90% of politicians give the other 10% a bad name.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
The superpowers often behave like two heavily armed blind men feeling their way around a room, each believing himself in mortal peril from the other, whom he assumes to have perfect vision.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
One theory is that we will make war look so attractive that we undermine the deterrent. That's Never Never Land. What we have now would have been enough to deter Hitler. But we are talking in a different order of reality.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
Competing pressures tempt one to believe that an issue deferred is a problem avoided more often it is a crisis invited.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
In a nuclear war, even if one side were to come out ahead by systems analytical standards, both sides would be so weakened, that it would - they would be in the position of Europe after the two World Wars.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
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
Image
There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
Don't be too ambitious. Do the most important thing you can think of doing every year and then your career will take care of itself.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
Statesman create ordinary leaders consume. The ordinary leader is satisfied with ameliorating the environment, not transforming it a statesman must be a visionary and an educator.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
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
Image
The nice thing about being a celebrity is that, if you bore people, they think it's their fault.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
I would have said, before the World Trade Center events, that he would try to get a normal relationship with China - making clear to China what the limits are of what America can accept, but also showing understanding for some of Chinese necessities. I thought he was moving towards the position that I have more or less advocated.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
If I should ever be captured, I want no negotiation - and if I should request a negotiation from captivity they should consider that a sign of duress.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
History is not, of course, a cookbook offering pretested recipes. It teaches by analogy, not by maxims. It can illuminate the consequences of actions in comparable situations, yet each generation must discover for itself what situations are in fact comparable.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
One thing I don't want around me is a military intellectual. I don't have to worry about you on that score.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
Iraq has to be made an international, and not just a national American problem.
Henry A. Kissinger
Image
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