Authors
Topics
Lists
Pictures
Resources
More about Henry Kissinger
Henry Kissinger Quotes
66 Sourced Quotes
Source
Report...
There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
Henry Kissinger
Source
Report...
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
Henry Kissinger
Source
Report...
I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.
Henry Kissinger
Source
Report...
The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.
Henry Kissinger
Source
Report...
The greatest need of the contemporary international system is an agreed concept of order.
Henry Kissinger
Source
Report...
The public life of every political figure is a continual struggle to rescue an element of choice from the pressure of circumstance.
Henry Kissinger
Source
Report...
Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered...
Henry Kissinger
Source
Report...
The capacity to admire others is not my most fully developed trait.
Henry Kissinger
Source
Report...
The emergence of a unified Europe is one of the most revolutionary events of our time.
Henry Kissinger
Source
Report...
Withdrawal of US troops will become like salted peanuts to the American public: the more US troops come home, the more will be demanded.
Memo to President Nixon
Henry Kissinger
Source
Report...
It is a mistake to assume that diplomacy can always settle international disputes if there is "good faith" and "willingness to come to an agreement". For in a revolutionary international order, each power will seem to its opponents to lack precisely these qualities. [...] In the absence of an agreement on what constitutes a reasonable demand, diplomatic conferences are occupied with sterile repetitions of basic positions and accusations of bad faith, or allegations of "unreasonableness" and "subversion". They become elaborate stage plays which attempt to attach as yet uncommitted powers to one of the opposing systems.
Henry Kissinger
Source
Report...
America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.
Henry Kissinger
Source
Report...
If you mean by "military victory" an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible.
Henry Kissinger
Source
Report...
Most foreign policies that history has marked highly, in whatever country, have been originated by leaders who were opposed by experts... It is, after all, the responsibility of the expert to operate the familiar and that of the leader to transcend it.
Henry Kissinger
Source
Report...
If peace is equated simply with the absence of war, it can become abject pacifism that turns the world over to the most ruthless.
Henry Kissinger
Source
Report...
High office teaches decision-making, not substance.... A period in high office consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it.
Henry Kissinger
Source
Report...
Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.
Henry Kissinger
Source
Report...
A statesman's duty is to bridge the gap between his vision and his nation's experience. If his vision gets too far out ahead of his nation's experience, he will lose his mandate. But if he hews too close to the conventional, he will lose control over events.
Henry Kissinger
Source
Report...
Intellectuals are cynical and cynics have never built a cathedral.
Henry Kissinger
Source
Report...
Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed... History is a tale of efforts that failed, of aspirations that weren't realized... So, as a historian, one has to live with a sense of the inevitability of tragedy.
Henry Kissinger
Source
Report...
Mr Clinton does not have the strength of character to be a war criminal.
Henry Kissinger
Source
Report...
We cannot always assure the future of our friends; we have a better chance of assuring our future if we remember who our friends are.
Henry Kissinger
Source
Report...
We fought a military war; our opponents fought a political one. We sought physical attrition; our opponents aimed for our psychological exhaustion. In the process we lost sight of one of the cardinal maxims of guerrilla war: the guerrilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does not win. The North Vietnamese used their armed forces the way a bull-fighter uses his cape — to keep us lunging in areas of marginal political importance.
Henry Kissinger
Source
Report...
Every success is usually an admission ticket to a new set of decisions.
Henry Kissinger
Source
Report...
Competing pressures tempt one to believe that an issue deferred is a problem avoided; more often it is a crisis invited.
Henry Kissinger
1
2
3
Quote of the day
Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor.
Ogden Nash
Henry Kissinger
Creative Commons
Born:
May 27, 1923
Died:
November 29, 2023
(aged 100)
Bio:
Henry Alfred Kissinger was an American diplomat and political scientist. He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as United States Secretary of State in the administrations of presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.
Known for:
Diplomacy (1994)
White House years (1979)
On China (2011)
Years of Upheaval (1982)
A World Restored (1957)
Most used words:
war
experience
american
political
country
foreign
leaders
history
peace
policy
vision
international
friends
men
control
Henry Kissinger on Wikipedia
Henry Kissinger works on Wikisource
Suggest an edit or a new quote
Henry Kissinger Quotes
Henry Kissinger Short Quotes
Quotes about Henry Kissinger
German Politician Quotes
Politician Quotes
20th-century Politician Quotes
Related People
Richard Nixon
American President
David Rockefeller
American Philanthropist
Zbigniew Brzezinski
Polish Politician
Gerald Ford
American President
Featured Authors
Lists
Predictions that didn't happen
If it's on the Internet it must be true
Remarkable Last Words (or Near-Last Words)
Picture Quotes
Confucius
Philip James Bailey
Eleanor Roosevelt
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Popular Topics
life
love
nature
time
god
power
human
mind
work
art
heart
thought
men
day
×
Lib Quotes