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

The convictions that leaders have formed before reaching high office are the intellectual capital they will consume as long as they continue in office. — Henry A. Kissinger

Constantly changing shape as its rulers annexed contiguous territories, Russia was an empire out of scale in comparison with any of the European countries. Moreover, with every new conquest, the character of the state changed as it incorporated another brand-new, restive, non-Russian ethnic group. This was one of the reasons Russia felt obliged to maintain huge armies whose size was unrelated to any plausible threat to its external security. — Henry Kissinger

I can think of no faster way to unite the American people behind George W. Bush than a terrorist attack on an American target overseas. And I believe George W. Bush will quickly unite the American people through his foreign policy. — Henry A. Kissinger

Countries do not assume burdens because it is fair, only because it is necessary. — Henry A. Kissinger

Any fact that needs to be disclosed should be put out now or as quickly as possible, because otherwise the bleeding will not end. — Henry A. Kissinger

Nixon did not anticipate the extent to which Kissinger, whom he barely knew when he appointed him national-security adviser in 1969, would be envious and high-strung - a maintenance project of the first order. — Robert Dallek

Because i have been a man of order, my efforts were directed towards the attainment of a real, not a deceptive, freedom...I have always considered despotism of any kind a symptom of weakness. Where it appears, it condemns itself; most intolerably where it appears behind the mask of advancing the cause of liberty. — Kissinger Henry

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

History knows no resting places and no plateaus — Henry Kissinger

history teaches by analogy, shedding light on the likely consequences of comparable situations. — Henry Kissinger

America has made it very clear in several administrations that if there is an attack by China on Taiwan, the United States is very likely to resist. — Henry A. Kissinger

Henry Kissinger should have the door shut in his face by every decent person and should be shamed, ostracized and excluded. — Christopher Hitchens

For Roosevelt, if a nation was unable or unwilling to act to defend its own interests, it could not expect others to respect them. Inevitably, — Henry Kissinger

This country cannot afford to tear itself apart on a partisan basis on issues so vital to our national security. — Henry A. 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

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

Who controls money control the world. — Henry Kissinger

Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There is too much fraternizing with the enemy. — Henry Kissinger

World population needs to be decreased by 50% — Henry A. Kissinger

China is a country with a record of continuous self-government going back 4,000 years, the only society that has achieved this. One must start with the assumption that they must have learnt something about the requirements for survival, and it is not always to be assumed that we know it better than they do. — Henry A. Kissinger

To have the United States suddenly come up with a peace proposal after a whole series of terrorist attacks is going to show to the world that this sort of method is something that western societies can't stand. — Henry A. Kissinger

The emergence of a unified Europe is one of the most revolutionary events of our time. — Henry A. Kissinger

If you watch the evening news, Dr. Kissinger is very often brought on to sort of be the statesman of his age and to reflect dispassionately on world events. And so a film challenging his legacy, a film that assesses charges that are quite grave against him, is something that is touchy for the media to show. — Eugene Jarecki

We are doomed to coexist. — Henry A. Kissinger

In the middle '50s, I had written that the point would come, inevitably, at which the relationship between the cause of conflict and political objectives would be lost. — Henry A. Kissinger

NAFTA represents the single most creative step towards a New World Order. — Henry A. Kissinger

Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately. — Henry A. Kissinger

Statesmen think in terms of history and view society as an organism. Prophets are different since they believe absolute aims can be achieved in the foreseeable future. More people have been killed by crusaders than by statesmen. — Henry A. Kissinger

You become a superpower by being strong but also by being wise and by being farsighted. But no state is strong or wise enough to create a world order alone. — Henry A. 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

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

An expert is someone who articulates the needs of those in power. — Henry A. Kissinger

In my life, I have almost always been on the side of active foreign policy. But you need to know with whom you are cooperating. You need reliable partners. — Henry A. Kissinger

How to Achieve The New World Order — Henry A. 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

I think Henry Kissinger grew up with that odd mix of ego and insecurity that comes from being the smartest kid in the class. From really knowing you're more awesomely intelligent than anybody else, but also being the guy who got beaten up for being Jewish. — Walter Isaacson

In recent years, as personal memories have faded, another perspective is beginning to make a tentative appearance in China. This view acknowledges the colossal wrongs committed during the Cultural Revolution, but it begins to inquire whether perhaps Mao raised an important question, even if his answer to it proved disastrous. The problem Mao is said to have identified is the relationship of the modern state - especially the Communist state - to the people it governs. In largely agricultural - and even incipient industrial - societies, governance concerns issues within the capacity of the general public to understand. Of course, in aristocratic societies, the relevant public is limited. But whatever the formal legitimacy, some tacit consensus by those who are to carry out directives is needed - unless governance is to be entirely by imposition, which is usually unsustainable over a historic period. — Henry Kissinger

Over time even two armed blind men in a room can do enormous damage to each other, not to speak of the room. — Henry A. 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

A bluff taken seriously is more useful than a serious threat interpreted as a bluff. — Henry A. 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

The China of the 1970s was a communist dictatorship. The China of the twenty-first century is a one-party state without a firm ideological foundation, more similar to Mexico under the PRI than Russia under Stalin. But the measurement of the political and the economic evolution has not yet been completed, and is one of the weak points of the system. — Henry A. Kissinger

I don't think that experience is a very useful or convincing attribute for a sensible foreign policy. Henry Kissinger had a lot of experience. — Noam Chomsky

I have been observing China for more than 30 years and am impressed how logically and wisely it tackles its problems. Obviously the international system could be unbalanced by China's rising power - if we don't prepare ourselves for the new competitive situation, that is. But it is an economic challenge, not aggression on the level of Hitler. — Henry A. 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

Leaders are responsible not for running public opinion polls but for the consequences of their actions. — Henry A. Kissinger

Well it did not make excessive sense to say that 20 million people are the recognized government of a billion people that have their own institutions. We did not change it in the sense that we said this has to end, but there was a U.N. vote that transferred the legitimacy of China from Taiwan to Beijing. Beijing was recognized as the government of all of China. Then, under President Carter, we followed what the U.N. had already done eight years earlier. — Henry A. Kissinger

Diplomacy: the art of restraining power. — Henry A. Kissinger

Before Admiral Guzzetti traveled to Washington to see Kissinger in October 1976, Hill had met him and told him that "murdering priests and dumping forty-seven bodies in the street in one day could not be seen in the context of defeating the terrorists quickly; on the contrary such acts were probably counterproductive. What the USG [United States Government] hoped was that the GOA [Government of Argentina] could soon defeat terrorists, yes, but as nearly as possible within the law." Even this admonition, which might be seen by some as containing a loophole or two, was considered too harsh by Kissinger. Guzzetti — Christopher Hitchens

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

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

University politics make me long for the simplicity of the Middle East. — Henry A. Kissinger

Obama was the fourth president I had worked for who said outright that he wanted to eliminate all nuclear weapons (Carter, Reagan, and Bush 41 were the others). Former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, former defense secretary Bill Perry, and former senator Sam Nunn had also called for "going to zero." The only problem, in my view, was that I hadn't heard the leaders of any other nuclear country - Britain, France, Russia, China, India, or Pakistan - signal the same intent. — Robert M. Gates

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

[T]hose who willed the means and wished the ends are not absolved from guilt by the refusal of reality to match their schemes. — Christopher Hitchens

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

Similar questions were posed to Allende as to me. Allende was told that he blamed everything on a conspiracy, on the economic crisis, that he blamed the high inflation that sabotaged him on the United States, and that he was frequently accusing the little lambs of Nixon and Kissinger of a coup. But everything became known later. — Nicolas Maduro

To have striven so hard, to have molded a public personality out of so amorphous an identity, to have sustained that superhuman effort only to end with every weakness disclosed and every error compounding the downfall
that was a fate of biblical proportions. Evidently the Deity would not tolerate the presumption that all can be manipulated; an object lesson of the limits of human presumption was necessary. — Henry A. Kissinger

Even paranoid people have enemies. — Henry A. 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

1. Bangladesh.... In 1971 ... Kissinger overrode all advice in order to support the Pakistani generals in both their civilian massacre policy in East Bengal and their armed attack on India from West Pakistan.... This led to a moral and political catastrophe the effects of which are still sorely felt. Kissinger's undisclosed reason for the 'tilt' was the supposed but never materialised 'brokerage' offered by the dictator Yahya Khan in the course of secret diplomacy between Nixon and China.... Of the new state of Bangladesh, Kissinger remarked coldly that it was 'a basket case' before turning his unsolicited expertise elsewhere. — William M. Arkin

Of course, in principle, they're against it. We are the ones that keep asking them what they think about it. I think their basic concern is a land-based missile defense of Taiwan hooked into the American communications and other systems, which in effect would make Taiwan then an outpost of the United States. That is a concern they frequently express. A missile defense shield of the United States, while they may not like it, it is not a big obstacle to our relationship. — Henry A. 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

This body of thought represents an almost total inversion of Westphalian world order. In the purist version of Islamism, the state cannot be the point of departure for an international system because states are secular, hence illegitimate; at best they may achieve a kind of provisional status en route to a religious entity on a larger scale. Noninterference in other countries' domestic affairs cannot serve as a governing principle, because national loyalties represent deviations from the true faith and because jihadists have a duty to transform dar al-harb, the world of unbelievers. Purity, not stability, is the guiding principle of this conception of world order. — 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

I go out with actresses because I'm not apt to marry one. — Henry A. 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

Vice-President Ford, possibly preparing for higher duties, assessed Kissinger's part in the Syrian-Israeli troop disengagement as the great diplomatic triumph of this century or perhaps any other. — Edwin Newman

Diplomats operate through deadlock, which is the way by which two sides can test each other's determination. Even if they have egos for it few heads of government have the time to resolve stalemates, their meetings are too short and the demands of protocol too heavy. — Henry A. Kissinger

Many of the scientists have believed that their contribution to ending the nuclear race is not to let any new weapons to be developed. — Henry A. Kissinger

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

In this case, National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger's orders were being carried out - "anything that flies on anything that moves," an open call for genocide that is rare in the historical record. — Noam Chomsky

Everybody who has dealt with China over an extended period of time has come to more or less the same conclusions. There are nuances of differences, but not fundamental differences. I think that President Bush was heading in this direction, and I have no doubt that he will again wind up in this position. But right now he has to be preoccupied with the atrocity committed in New York and Washington. — Henry A. Kissinger

I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves. — Henry A. Kissinger

I do not stand on protocol. If you just call me Excellency, it will be okay. — Henry A. 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

The key decision for a statesman is whether to commit his nation or not. There is no middle course. Once a great nation commits itself, it must prevail. It will acquire no kudos for translating its inner doubts into hesitation. — Henry A. Kissinger

The qualifications that I have to speak on world affairs are exactly the same ones Henry Kissinger has, and Walt Rostow has, or anybody in the Political Science Department, professional historians - none, none that you don't have. The only difference is, I don't pretend to have qualifications, nor do I pretend that qualifications are needed. I mean, if somebody were to ask me to give a talk on quantum physics, I'd refuse - because I don't understand enough. But world affairs are trivial: there's nothing in the social sciences or history or whatever that is beyond the intellectual capacities of an ordinary fifteen-year-old. You have to do a little work, you have to do some reading, you have to be able to think but there's nothing deep - if there are any theories around that require some special kind of training to understand, then they've been kept a carefully guarded secret. — Noam Chomsky

In 10 years, there will be no more Israel. — Henry A. Kissinger

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

I don't think that that's a desirable option for us. Besides, it wouldn't work, because there are too many other countries that are willing to work economically with China. But I don't think the basic relationship depends on economics. It depends on a political understanding of what is required for peace in Asia. — Henry A. Kissinger

Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. — Tom Lehrer

The tragedy of Wilsonianism is that it bequeathed to the twentieth century's decisive power an elevated foreign policy doctrine unmoored from a sense of history or geopolitics. — Henry Kissinger

President [Ronald] Reagan never has tried to become an expert on military matters. He never has endeavored to learn the most important details in that field, which lead to a situation in which his aides played a much greater roles than aides would have played under President Ford or let us say in the whole Nixon-Ford-Kissinger era. — Helmut Schmidt

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

In crises the most daring course is often safest. — Henry A. Kissinger

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

The issues are too important to be left for the voters. — Henry Kissinger

Sketches Einstein: His Life and Universe A Benjamin Franklin Reader Benjamin Franklin: An American Life Kissinger: A Biography The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (with Evan Thomas) — Walter Isaacson

The real distinction is between those who adapt their purposes to reality and those who seek to mold reality in the light of their purposes. — Henry A. Kissinger

Certainly not a party of the workers and the peasants. In fact, Jiang Zemin in recent weeks has officially said that capitalists and the entrepreneurs should be enrolled in the Communist Party. — Henry A. 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