Henry Kissinger - History Quotes

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It is one of history's ironies that Communism, advertised as a classless society, tended to breed a privileged class of feudal proportions.

Henry Kissinger
History has so far shown us only two roads to international stability: domination and equilibrium.

Henry Kissinger
History knows no resting places and no plateaus.

Henry Kissinger
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
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
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 Kissinger
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 Kissinger