Henry Kissinger quotes - page 4

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:

The American temptation is to believe that foreign policy is a subdivision of psychiatry.

Henry Kissinger

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

Henry Kissinger

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

Henry Kissinger

It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise.

Henry Kissinger

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

Henry Kissinger

Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately.

Henry Kissinger

I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.

Henry Kissinger

History knows no resting places and no plateaus.

Henry Kissinger

Every victory is only the price of admission to a more difficult problem.

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.

Henry Kissinger

Ever since the secret trip to China, my own relationship with Nixon had grown complicated.

Henry Kissinger

We fought a military war; our opponents fought a political one.

Henry Kissinger

I've always acted alone. Americans like that immensely.

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.

Henry Kissinger

Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed.

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.

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.

Henry Kissinger

If we do what is necessary, all the odds are in our favor.

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

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.

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.

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.

Henry Kissinger