Henry Kissinger quotes

Henry Kissinger was an American diplomat and political scientist, renowned for his role in shaping U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War. As Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, he played a key part in diplomatic initiatives with China and the Soviet Union. He remained an influential figure in international relations and global strategy for decades. Here are 118 of his quotes:

Even a paranoid can have enemies.

Henry Kissinger

There cannot be a crisis today my schedule is already full.

Henry Kissinger

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

Henry Kissinger

Diplomacy: the art of restraining power.

Henry Kissinger

The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.

Henry Kissinger

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

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

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

Henry Kissinger

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

Henry Kissinger

The security of Israel is a moral imperative for all free peoples.

Henry Kissinger

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

Henry Kissinger

Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.

Henry Kissinger

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

Henry 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 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.

Henry Kissinger

A country that demands moral perfection in its foreign policy will achieve neither perfection nor security.

Henry Kissinger

The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy. And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.

Henry Kissinger

Intellectuals are cynical and cynics have never built a cathedral.

Henry Kissinger

It is barely conceivable that there are people who like war.

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

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

Who do I call if I want to speak to Europe?

Henry Kissinger