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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

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Henry A. Kissinger
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More quotes by 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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Art is man's expression of his joy in labor.
Henry A. Kissinger
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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.
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.
Henry A. Kissinger
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I believe it is a mistake to isolate arms control from other areas of policy.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately.
Henry A. Kissinger
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President Nixon in his inaugural address indicated that he wanted an era of negotiation. Our reasoning was that whatever our ideological differences, whatever our geopolitical differences, we were condemned to coexistence by nuclear weapons.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Becoming conscious is of course a sacrilege against nature it is as though you had robbed the unconscious of something. The nice thing about being a celebrity is that if you bore people they think it's their fault.
Henry A. Kissinger
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The British capitalize on their accent when they don't want you to know what they're saying. But if you wake them up at 4 A.M., they speak perfect English, the same as we do.
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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Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
Henry A. Kissinger
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I don't have a brief for every single reaction of Israel, but I think it is important that the political negotiations occur free of the threat of terrorism.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Nixon had three goals: to win by the biggest electoral landslide in history to be remembered as a peacemaker and to be accepted by the 'Establishment' as an equal. He achieved all these objectives at the end of 1972 and the beginning of 1973. And he lost them all two months later-partly because he turned a dream into an obsession.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Accept everything about yourself - I mean everything, You are you and that is the beginning and the end - no apologies, no regrets.
Henry A. Kissinger
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The nuclear weapons were not useful for the achievement of political objectives.
Henry A. Kissinger
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The members of the Islamic Staye have cut the throat of an American on television. This is an insult to the United States, which requires that we demonstrate that this is not an act that is free. I would strongly favor a strong attack on ISIS for a period that is related to the murder of the American.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Intelligence is not all that important in the exercise of power, and is often, in point of fact, useless.
Henry A. Kissinger
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An Iranian moderate is one who has run out of ammunition.
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 am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.
Henry A. Kissinger