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Henry Kissinger



  • Most foreign policies that history has marked highly , in whatever country, have been originated by leaders who were opposed by experts.
 

  • A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone.



  • Diplomacy: the art of restraining power.



  • No foreign policy - no matter how ingenious - has any chance of success if it is born in the minds of a few and carried in the hearts of none.



  • It is, after all, the responsibility of the expert to operate the familiar and that of the leader to transcend it.



  • Moderation is a virtue only in those who are thought to have an alternative.



  • The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose.



  • To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it.



  • Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.



  • No one will ever win the batter of the sexes; there's too much fraternizing with the enemy.



  • Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.



  • People are generally amazed that I would take an interest in any form that would require me to stop talking for three hours.



  • The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose.



  • While we should never give up our principles, we must also realize that we cannot maintain our principles unless we survive.



  • Next week there can't be any crisis. My schedule is already full.



  • 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.



  • If it's going to come out eventually, better have it come out immediately.



  • If eighty percent of your sales come from twenty percent of all of your items, just carry those twenty percent.



  • The history of things that didn't happen has never been written.



  • If you don't know where you are going every road will get you nowhere.



  • Accept everything about yourself -I mean everything, you are you and that is the beginning and the end - no apologies, no regrets.



  • The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.



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



  • University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.



  • The nice thing about being a celebrity is that when you bore people, they think it's their fault.



  • Even a paranoid can have enemies.



  • 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, who he assumes to have perfect vision.



  • Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately.



  • There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.



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



  • If I should ever be captured, I want no negotiation - and if I should request a negotiation from captivity they should consider that a sing of duress.



  • No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time.



  • In crises the most daring course is often safest.



  • The statesman's duty is to bridge the gap between his nation's experience and his vision.



  • A leader who confines his role to his people's experience dooms himself to stagnation; a leader who outstrips his people's experience runs the risk of not being understood.



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



  • Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.



  • 90% of the politicians give the other 10% a bad reputation.



  • The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself.



  • Art is man's expression of his joy in labor.



  • Leaders are responsible not for running public opinion polls but for the consequences of their actions.



  • Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision.



  • The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.



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