Henry Kissinger quotes - page 4

For other nations, utopia is a blessed past never to be recovered; for Americans it is just beyond the horizon. (Henry Kissinger)
The American temptation is to believe that foreign policy is a subdivision of psychiatry. View quote
Henry Kissinger
If eighty percent of your sales come from twenty percent of all of your items, just carry those twenty percent. View quote
Henry Kissinger
No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time. View quote
Henry Kissinger
It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise. View quote
Henry Kissinger
Moderation is a virtue only in those who are thought to have an alternative. View quote
Henry Kissinger
Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately. View quote
Henry Kissinger
I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850. View quote
Henry Kissinger
History knows no resting places and no plateaus. View quote
Henry Kissinger
Every victory is only the price of admission to a more difficult problem. View quote
Henry Kissinger
Corrupt politicians make the other ten percent look bad. (Henry Kissinger)
This amazing, romantic character suits me precisely because to be alone has always been part of my style or, if you like, my technique. View quote
Henry Kissinger
Ever since the secret trip to China, my own relationship with Nixon had grown complicated. View quote
Henry Kissinger
We fought a military war; our opponents fought a political one. View quote
Henry Kissinger
I've always acted alone. Americans like that immensely. View quote
Henry Kissinger
Fame was sufficiently novel for me to be flattered by the company I would be keeping. I had not bothered to read her writings; her evisceration of other victims was thus unknown to me. View quote
Henry Kissinger
Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed. View quote
Henry Kissinger
One theory is that we will make war look so attractive that we undermine the deterrent. That's Never Never Land. What we have now would have been enough to deter Hitler. But we are talking in a different order of reality. View quote
Henry Kissinger
People think responsibility is hard to bear. It's not. I think that sometimes it is the absence of responsibility that is harder to bear. You have a great feeling of impotence. View quote
Henry Kissinger
If we do what is necessary, all the odds are in our favor. View quote
Henry Kissinger
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)
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. View quote
Henry Kissinger
There are only two reasons to sit in the back row of an airplane either you have diarrhea, or you're anxious to meet people who do. View quote
Henry Kissinger
In relations with many domestically weak countries, a radio transmitter can be a more effective for form of pressure than a squadron of B-52's. View quote
Henry Kissinger
The superpowers often behave like two heavily armed blind men feeling their way around a room, each believing himself in mortal peril from the other, whom he assumes to have perfect vision. Each side should know that frequently uncertainty, compromise, and incoherence are the essence of policymaking. Yet each tends to ascribe to the other a consistency, foresight, and coherence that its own experience belies. Of course, over time, even two armed blind men can do enormous damage to each other, not to speak of the room. View quote
Henry Kissinger