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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.

Henry A. Kissinger

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Henry A. Kissinger
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More quotes by Henry A. Kissinger

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I don't read books, I write them.
Henry A. Kissinger
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The Gorbachev period is conceived as an abandonment of historic Russian positions. So this is the framework, in my view, in which Putin operates.
Henry A. Kissinger
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There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
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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I grew up as a discriminated minority in a dictatorship, so obviously the issue of human rights is a matter of concern for me.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Some of the critics viewed Vietnam as a morality play in which the wicked must be punished before the final curtain and where any attempt to salvage self-respect from the outcome compounded the wrong. I viewed it as a genuine tragedy. No one had a monopoly on anguish.
Henry A. Kissinger
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I think China will do nothing to obstruct it, and they probably will go along with it.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Henceforth the adequacy of any military establishment will be tested by its ability to preserve the peace.
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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At any rate, mutually assured destruction was never our policy.
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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The American formal position has been that we oppose violence by governments against their people. That principle should not be abandoned.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Our nation is uniquely endowed to play a creative and decisive role in the new order which is taking form around us.
Henry A. Kissinger
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With proper tactics, nuclear war need not be as destructive as it appears.
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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Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed.
Henry A. Kissinger
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In his essay, ‘Perpetual Peace,’ the philosopher, Immanuel Kant, argued that perpetual peace would eventually come to the world in one of two ways, by human insight or by conflicts and catastrophes of a magnitude that left humanity no other choice. We are at such a juncture.
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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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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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