Henry Kissinger Quotes & Sayings

One line of thinking holds that similar principles of networked communication, if applied correctly to the realm of international affairs, could help solve age-old problems of violent conflict. Traditional ethnic and sectarian rivalries may be muted in the Internet age, this theory posits, because "people who try to perpetuate myths about religion, culture, ethnicity or anything else will struggle to keep their narratives afloat amid a sea of newly informed listeners. With more data, everyone gains a better frame of reference. — Henry Kissinger

I want to express here my continuing respect and personal affection for President George W. Bush, who guided America with courage, dignity, and conviction in an unsteady time. His objectives and dedication honored his country even when in some cases they proved unattainable within the American political cycle. — Henry Kissinger

If history teaches anything it is that there can be no peace without equilibrium and no justice without restraint. — Henry Kissinger

A turbulent history has taught Chinese leaders that not every problem has a solution and that too great an emphasis on total mastery over specific events could upset the harmony of the universe. — Henry Kissinger

In any of these evolutions, India will be a fulcrum of twenty-first-century order: an indispensable element, based on its geography, resources, and tradition of sophisticated leadership, in the strategic and ideological evolution of the regions and the concepts of order at whose intersection it stands. — Henry Kissinger

Side by side with the limitless possibilities opened up by the new technologies, reflection about international order must include the internal dangers of societies driven by mass consensus, deprived of the context and foresight needed on terms compatible with their historical character. In every other era, this has been considered the essence of leadership; in our own, it risks being reduced to a series of slogans designed to capture immediate short-term approbation. Foreign policy is in danger of turning into a subdivision of domestic politics instead of an exercise in shaping the future. If the major countries conduct their policies in this manner internally, their relations on the international stage will suffer concomitant distortions. The search for perspective may well be replaced by a hardening of differences, statesmanship by posturing. As diplomacy is transformed into gestures geared toward passions, the search for equilibrium risks giving way to a testing of limits. — Henry Kissinger

Because complexity inhibits flexibility, early choices are especially crucial. — Henry Kissinger

The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been. — Henry Kissinger

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

The nice thing about being a celebrity is that if you bore people they think it's their fault. — Henry Kissinger

When Germany declared itself ready to discuss an armistice, Wilson refused to negotiate until the Kaiser abdicated. — Henry Kissinger

The United States is baiting China and Russia, and the final nail in the coffin will be Iran, which is, of course, the main target of Israel. We have allowed China to increase their military strength and Russia to recover from Sovietization, to give them a false sense of bravado, this will create an all together faster demise for them. We're like the sharp shooter daring the noob to pick up the gun, and when they try, it's bang bang. The coming war will be so severe that only one superpower can win, and that's us folks. This is why the EU is in such a hurry to form a complete superstate because they know what is coming, and to survive, Europe will have to be one whole cohesive state. Their urgency tells me that they know full well that the big showdown is upon us. O how I have dreamed of this delightful moment. — Henry Kissinger

We shouldn't be afraid of atomic bombs and missiles. No matter what kind of war breaks out - conventional or thermonuclear - we'll win. As for China, if the imperialists unleash war on us, we may lose more than three hundred million people. So what? War is war. The years will pass, and we'll get to work producing more babies than ever before.27 — Henry Kissinger

Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy. — Henry Kissinger

The cultural and political backgrounds of the two sides diverge in important aspects. The American approach to policy is pragmatic; China's is conceptual. America has never had a powerful threatening neighbor; China has never been without a powerful adversary on its borders. Americans hold that every problem has a solution; Chinese think that each solution is an admission ticket to a new set of problems. Americans seek an outcome responding to immediate circumstances; Chinese concentrate on evolutionary change. Americans outline an agenda of practical "deliverable" items; Chinese set out general principles and analyze where they will lead. Chinese thinking is shaped in part by Communism but embraces a traditionally Chinese way of thought to an increasing extent; neither is intuitively familiar to Americans. China — Henry Kissinger

Self-governed nations do not fill their neighbor states with spies — Henry Kissinger

Who controls money control the world. — Henry Kissinger

A Harvard study has shown that in fifteen cases in history where a rising and an established power interacted, ten ended in war. — Henry Kissinger

The Westphalian peace reflected a practical accommodation to reality, not a unique moral insight. It relied on a system of independent states refraining from interference in each other's domestic affairs and checking each other's ambitions through a general equilibrium of power. — Henry Kissinger

But Japan drew from the challenge the opposite conclusion as China: it threw open its doors to foreign technology and overhauled its institutions in an attempt to replicate the Western powers' rise. — Henry Kissinger

It is . . . a melancholy fact that the countries which are most humanitarian, which are most interested in internal improvement, tend to grow weaker compared with the other countries which possess a less altruistic civilization . . — Henry Kissinger

History is the memory of States. — Henry Kissinger

It is not a matter of what is true that counts, but a matter of what is perceived to be true. — Henry Kissinger

Tradition matters because it is not given to societies to proceed through history as if they had no past and as if every course of action were available to them. they may deviate from the previous trajectory only within a finite margin. the great statesmen act at the outer limit of that margin. if they fall short, society stagnates. if they exceed it, they lose the capacity to shape posterity. — Henry Kissinger

Spanish territory in Florida and Texas - the — Henry Kissinger

If Chinese exceptionalism represented the claims of a universal empire, Japanese exceptionalism sprang from the insecurities of an island nation borrowing heavily from its neighbor, but fearful of being dominated by it. — Henry Kissinger

The lowest form of war is To attack Cities. Siege warfare Is a last resort ... The Skillful Strategist Defeats the enemy Without doing battle, Captures the city Without laying siege, Overthrows the enemy state Without protracted war.34 — Henry Kissinger

Americans hold that every problem has a solution; Chinese think that each solution is an admission ticket to a new set of problems. — Henry Kissinger

In effect, none of the most important countries which must build a new world order have had any experience with the multistate system that is emerging. Never before has a new world order had to be assembled from so many different perceptions, or on so global a scale. — Henry Kissinger

Covert action should not be confused with missionary work. — Henry Kissinger

The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.
— Henry Kissinger

Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God — Henry Kissinger

A country that demands moral perfection in its foreign policy will achieve neither perfection nor security — Henry Kissinger

The highest form of warfare Is to attack [the enemy's] Strategy itself; The next, To attack [his] Alliances. The next, To attack Armies; — Henry Kissinger

America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests — Henry Kissinger

Is the marketing effort designed to convey the candidate's convictions, or are the convictions expressed by the candidate the reflections of a "big data" research effort into individuals' likely preferences and prejudices? — Henry Kissinger

In the end, peace can be achieved only by hegemony or by balance of power. — Henry Kissinger

Politicians are like dogs ... Their life expectancy is too short for a commitment to be bearable — Henry Kissinger

Poor old Germany. Too big for Europe, too small for the world — Henry Kissinger

When the Chinese court deigned to send envoys abroad, they were not diplomats, but "Heavenly Envoys" from the Celestial Court. — Henry Kissinger

they agreed to cede a third of European Russia to German control in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk of 1918. — Henry Kissinger

Order should not have priority over freedom. But the affirmation of freedom should be elevated from a mood to a strategy. — Henry Kissinger

Deliberative assemblies shall be widely established and all matters decided by open discussion. 3. All classes, high and low, shall be united in vigorously carrying out the administration of affairs of state. 4. The common people, no less than the civil and military officials, shall all be allowed to pursue their own calling so that there may be no discontent. 5. Evil customs of the past shall be broken off and everything based upon the just laws of Nature. 6. Knowledge shall be sought throughout the world so as to strengthen the foundation of imperial rule. — Henry Kissinger

There can't be a crisis next week, my schedule is already full. — Henry Kissinger

The war is just when the intention that causes it to be undertaken is just. The will is therefore the principle element that must be considered, not the means ... He who intends to kill the guilty sometimes faultlessly shed the blood of the innocents ... '
In short, the end justifies the means. — Henry Kissinger

The art of crisis management is to raise the stakes to where the adversary will not follow, but in a manner that avoids a tit for tat. — Henry Kissinger

Rarely has a diplomatic document so missed its objective as the Treaty of Versailles. Too punitive for conciliation, too lenient to keep Germany from recovering, the Treaty of Versailles condemned the exhausted democracies to constant vigilance against an irreconcilable and revanchist Germany as well as a revolutionary Soviet Union. — Henry Kissinger

Because in this view the domestic principles of an Islamic state were divinely ordained, non-Muslim political entities were illegitimate; they could never be accepted by Muslim states as truly equal counterparts. A peaceful world order depended on the ability to forge and expand a unitary Islamic entity, not on an equilibrium of competing parts. — Henry Kissinger

She had interviewed leading personalities all over the world. 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. — Henry Kissinger

Since Peter the Great, Russia had been expanding at the rate of one Belgium per year. — Henry Kissinger

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 Kissinger

May not lead to reduction in U.S. casualties until its final stages, as our casualty rate may be unrelated to the total number of American troops in South Vietnam. To kill about 150 U.S. soldiers a week, the enemy needs to attack only a small portion of our forces ... . — Henry Kissinger

The reason that university politics is so vicious is because stakes are so small — Henry Kissinger

The Commander of U.S. Cyber Command has predicted that "the next war will begin in cyberspace." It will not be possible to conceive of international order when the region through which states' survival and progress are taking place remains without any international standards of conduct and is left to unilateral decisions. — Henry Kissinger

The Soviet Union would never be bound by agreements, Deng warned; it understood only the language of countervailing force. — Henry Kissinger

The state is a fragile organization, and the statesman does not have the moral right to risk its survival on ethical restraint. — Henry Kissinger

Order without freedom, even if sustained by momentary exaltation, eventually creates its own counterpoise; yet freedom cannot be secured or sustained without a framework of order to keep the peace. — Henry Kissinger

Upon learning of Cardinal Richelieu's death, Pope Urban VIII is alleged to have said, If there is a God, the Cardinal de Richelieu will have much to answer for. If not ... well, he had a successful life. — Henry Kissinger

Any system of world order, to be sustainable, must be accepted as just - not only by leaders, but also by citizens. It must reflect two truths: order without freedom, even if sustained by momentary exaltation, eventually creates its own counterpoise; yet freedom cannot be secured or sustained without a framework of order to keep the peace. Order and freedom, sometimes described as opposite poles on the spectrum of experience, should instead be understood as interdependent. Can today's leaders rise above the urgency of day-to-day events to achieve this balance? — Henry Kissinger

One of Ronald Reagan's fantasies as president was that he would take Mikhail Gorbachev on a tour of the United States so the Soviet leader could see how ordinary Americans lived. Reagan often talked about it. He imagined that he and Gorbachev would fly by helicopter over a working-class community, viewing a factory and its parking lot filled with cars and then circling over the pleasant neighborhood where the factory workers lived in homes "with lawns and backyards, perhaps with a second car or a boat in the driveway, not the concrete rabbit warrens I'd seen in Moscow." The helicopter would descend, and Reagan would invite Gorbachev to knock on doors and ask the residents "what they think of our system." The workers would tell him how wonderful it was to live in America. — Henry Kissinger

Order always requires a subtle balance of restraint, force, and legitimacy. — Henry Kissinger

New methods of accessing and communicating information unite regions as never before and project events globally - but in a manner that inhibits reflection, demanding of leaders that they register instantaneous reactions in a form expressible in slogans. Are we facing a period in which forces beyond the restraints of any order determine the future? — Henry Kissinger

Power without legitimacy tempts tests of strength; legitimacy without power tepmts empty posturing. — Henry Kissinger

Behind the slogans lay an intellectual vacuum. — Henry Kissinger

In every era, humanity produces demonic individuals and seductive ideas of repression. The task of statesmanship is to prevent their rise to power and sustain an international order capable of deterring them if they do achieve it. — Henry Kissinger

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 Kissinger

Both the American and the European approaches to foreign policy were the products of their own unique circumstances. Americans inhabited a nearly empty continent shielded from predatory powers by two vast oceans and with weak countries as neighbors. Since America confronted no power in need of being balanced, it could hardly have occupied itself with the challenges of equilibrium even if its leaders had been seized by the bizarre notion of replicating European conditions amidst a people who had turned their backs on Europe. — Henry Kissinger

Remember that the sanctity of life in the hill villages of Afghanistan is as inviolable in the eye of Almighty God as can be your own. Remember that He who has united you as human beings in the same flesh and blood has bound you by the law of mutual love ... not limited by the boundaries of Christian civilization ... .34 — Henry Kissinger

Torn between obsessive insecurity and proselytizing zeal, between the requirements of Europe and the temptations of Asia, the Russian Empire always had a role in the European equilibrium but was never emotionally a part of it. — Henry Kissinger

Especially when ultimate decisions of peace and war are involved, a strategist must be aware that bluffs may be called and must take into account the impact on his future credibility of an empty threat. — Henry Kissinger

If Tehran insists on combining the Persian imperial tradition with contemporary Islamic fervor, then a collision with America - and, indeed, with its negotiating partners of the Six - is unavoidable. Iran simply cannot be permitted to fulfill a dream of imperial rule in a region of such importance to the rest of the world. — Henry Kissinger

In the vacuum of authority following the demonstrations' initial success, factions from the pre-uprising period are often in a position to shape the outcome. — Henry Kissinger

Almost all empires were created by force, but none can be sustained by it. Universal rule, to last, needs to translate force into obligation. Otherwise, the energies of the rulers will be exhausted in maintaining their dominance at the expense of their ability to shape the future, which is the ultimate task of statesmanship. Empires persist if repression gives way to consensus. So — Henry Kissinger

It supported participatory governance in both friendly and adversarial countries; it played a leading role in articulating new humanitarian principles, and since 1945 it has, in five wars and on several other occasions, spent American blood to redeem them in distant corners of the world. No other country would have had the idealism and the resources to take on such a range of challenges or the capacity to succeed in so many of them. American idealism and exceptionalism were the driving forces behind the building of a new international order. — Henry Kissinger

Yet after withdrawing from three wars in two generations - each begun with idealistic aspirations and widespread public support but ending in national trauma - America struggles to define the relationship between its power (still vast) and its principles. — Henry Kissinger

A country whose security depends on producing a genius in each generation sets itself a task no society has ever met. — Henry Kissinger

An alliance with France was enlisted in the war for independence from Britain, then loosened in the aftermath, as France undertook revolution and embarked on a European crusade in which the United States had no direct interest. When President Washington, in his 1796 Farewell Address - delivered in the midst of the French revolutionary wars - counseled that the United States "steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world" and instead "safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies," he was issuing not so much a moral pronouncement as a canny judgment about how to exploit America's comparative advantage: the United States, a fledgling power safe behind oceans, did not have the need or the resources to embroil itself in continental controversies over the balance of power. — Henry Kissinger

Long ago, in youth, I was brash enough to think myself able to pronounce on "The Meaning of History." I now know that history's meaning is a matter to be discovered, not declared. It is a question we must attempt to answer as best we can in recognition that it will remain open to debate; that each generation will be judged by whether the greatest, most consequential issues of the human condition have been faced, and that decisions to meet these challenges must be taken by statesmen before it is possible to know what the outcome may be. — Henry Kissinger

Realpolitik for Bismarck depended on flexibility and on the ability to exploit every available option without the constraint of ideology. — Henry Kissinger

In international affairs a reputation for reliability is a more important asset than demonstrations of tactical cleverness. — Henry Kissinger

Americans have a tendency to believe that when there's a problem there must be a solution. — Henry Kissinger

Will the emerging Europe become an active participant in the construction of a new international order, or will it consume itself on its own internal issues? — Henry Kissinger

Because information is so accessible and communication instantaneous, there is a diminution of focus on its significance, or even on the definition of what is significant. This dynamic may encourage policymakers to wait for an issue to arise rather than anticipate it, and to regard moments of decision as a series of isolated events rather than part of a historical continuum. When this happens, manipulation of information replaces reflection as the principal policy tool. — Henry Kissinger

If the major powers come to practice foreign policies of manipulating a multiplicity of subsovereign units observing ambiguous and often violent rules of conduct, many based on extreme articulations of divergent cultural experiences, anarchy is certain. — Henry Kissinger

Helmut, if I had known that one can make it to 90 on 60 cigarettes a day, I would have started smoking 30 years ago. [at Former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt's 90th birthday] — Henry Kissinger

The rich fertility of China's plains and a culture of uncommon resilience and political acumen had enabled China to remain unified over much of a two-millennia period and to exercise considerable political, economic, and cultural influence - even when it was militarily weak by conventional standards. Its comparative advantage resided in the wealth of its economy, which produced goods that all of its neighbors desired. Shaped by these elements, the Chinese idea of world order differed markedly from the European experience based on a multiplicity of co-equal states. — Henry Kissinger

Facts are rarely self-explanatory; their significance, analysis, and interpretation - at least in the foreign policy world - depend on context and relevance. — Henry Kissinger

The genius of this system, and the reason it spread across the world, was that its provisions were procedural, not substantive. — Henry Kissinger

The acquisition of knowledge from books provides an experience different from the Internet. Reading is relatively time-consuming; to ease the process, style is important. Because it is not possible to read all books on a given subject, much less the totality of books, or to organize easily everything one has read, learning from books places a premium on conceptual thinking - the ability to recognize comparable data and events and project patterns into the future. And style propels the reader into a relationship with the author, or with the subject matter, by fusing substance and aesthetics. — Henry Kissinger

Corrupt politicians make the other ten percent look bad. — Henry Kissinger

The kowtow was symbolically voluntary: it was the representative deference of a people that had been not so much conquered as awed. The tribute presented to China on such occasions was often exceeded in value by the Emperor's return gifts. — 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. — Henry Kissinger

Intellectuals analyze the operations of international systems; statesmen build them. — Henry Kissinger

It is not often that nations learn from the past,even rarer that they draw the correct conclusions from it. — Henry Kissinger

Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac. — Henry Kissinger

Later I learned to improve my forecasting - if necessary by asking the visitor in advance what subjects he intended to raise with Nixon. In — Henry Kissinger

In Washington ... the appearance of power is therefore almost as important as the reality of it. In fact, the appearance is frequently its essential reality — Henry Kissinger

Historically, alliances had been formed to augment a nation's strength in case of war; as World War I approached, the primary motive for war was to strengthen the alliances. — Henry Kissinger

Arsenals or downgrade the role of nuclear weapons in — Henry Kissinger

In recent decades, Europe has retreated to the conduct of soft power. But besieged as it is on almost all frontiers by upheavals and migration, Europe, including Britain, can avoid turning into a victim of circumstance only by assuming a more active role. — Henry Kissinger