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The test of policy is how it ends, not how it begins. Foreign policy is the art of establishing priorities. Demonization is not a policy it is an alibi for the absence of one. The test is not absolute satisfaction but balanced dissatisfaction.

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.
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With proper tactics, nuclear war need not be as destructive as it appears.
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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.
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Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.
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A bluff taken seriously is more useful than a serious threat interpreted as a bluff.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Obama is like a chess player who is playing simultaneous chess and has opened his game with an unusual opening.
Henry A. Kissinger
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To revolutionaries the significant reality is the world which they are fighting to bring about, not the world they are fighting to overcome.
Henry A. Kissinger
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I have always expressed respect for those people who make public declarations.
Henry A. Kissinger
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For the Soul of France is masterful history, brilliantly researched, and hard to put down.
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You can't make war in the Middle East without Egypt and you can't make peace without Syria.
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U.S. policy toward the third world should be one of depopulation
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.
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The history of things that didn't happen has never been written.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Why should we flagellate ourselves for what the Cambodians did to each other?
Henry A. Kissinger
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We have to be careful in negotiating with Iran that we don't create the impression among the Arab states and the Sunni states that we are working on a condominium between Iran and the United States, because that will panic them and drive them into making their own arrangement.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Power is the great aphrodisiac.
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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They [American forces] are there as an expression of the American national interest to prevent the Iranian combination of imperialism and fundamentalist ideology from dominating a region on which the energy supplies of the industrial democracies depend.
Henry A. Kissinger
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The capacity to admire others is not my most fully developed trait.
Henry A. Kissinger
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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.
Henry A. Kissinger