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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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Henry A. Kissinger
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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.
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The reason prophets are so rarely honored in their own country is that their role is to transcend the limits of their contemporaries' experience and imagination. They achieve recognition only when their vision has been turned into experience - in short, when it is too late to benefit from their foresight.
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I believe in freedom of expression, and I believe that societies thrive when they permit freedom of expression.
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Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.
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If peace is equated simply with the absence of war, it can become abject pacifism that turns the world over to the most ruthless.
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No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time.
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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.
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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.
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The nice thing about being a celebrity is that, if you bore people, they think it's their fault.
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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.
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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.
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I know Hillary Clinton as a person. And as a personal friend, I would say yes, she'd be a good president. But she'd put me under a great conflict of interest if she were a candidate because I intend to support the Republicans.
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In my particular case foreign policy happens to be my hobby, my consuming interest. I had spent decades studying it.
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Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately.
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There is no realism without an element of idealism.
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