Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Henry Kissinger (American Diplomat)

Henry Alfred Kissinger (1923–2023) was a German-born American diplomat and academic remembered as both foreign policy genius and a war criminal. As national security adviser (1969–75) and secretary of state (1973–77) under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, Kissinger put into practice a significant reorientation of American foreign policy.

Born of in Fürth, Bavaria, Kissinger left Adolf Hitler’s Germany in 1938 and became an American citizen five years later. After serving in the U.S. Army as a sergeant, he attended Harvard and became a professor of government.

As America’s principal diplomat overseas, Kissinger helped to improve relations with both China and the Soviet Union. He negotiated the withdrawal of American troops from South Vietnam, an effort that won him the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize. He later restored diplomatic relations with Egypt following the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

Kissinger later served as a consultant and a respected commentator on international affairs. He published two volumes of memoirs, The White House Years (1979) and Years of Upheaval (1982,) and many other books including Diplomacy (1995) and World Order (2015.)

Kissinger’s diplomacy during the Vietnam War and the covert American bombing of Cambodia (1969–70) that led to a catastrophic civil war are very controversial. Anglo-American journalist Christopher Hitchens published The Trial of Henry Kissinger (2001) denouncing Kissinger as a war criminal. Hitchens also alleged that Kissinger contributed to politically-motivated mass murders in Chile, Cambodia, East Timor, and elsewhere.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Henry Kissinger

For other nations, utopia is a blessed past never to be recovered; for Americans it is just beyond the horizon.
—Henry Kissinger
Topics: America

The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
—Henry Kissinger

Vietnam presumably taught us that the United States could not serve as the world’s policeman; it should also have taught us the dangers of trying to be the world’s midwife to democracy when the birth is scheduled to take place under conditions of guerrilla war.
—Henry Kissinger

Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.
—Henry Kissinger
Topics: Politics, Reputation, Politicians

It is, after all, the responsibility of the expert to operate the familiar and that of the leader to transcend it.
—Henry Kissinger
Topics: Experts, Professionalism

If you don’t know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere.
—Henry Kissinger
Topics: Goals

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.
—Henry Kissinger
Topics: Community

There can’t be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
—Henry Kissinger
Topics: Crises, Trouble

Vietnam was what we had instead of happy childhoods.
—Henry Kissinger

The essence of this man [Richard M. Nixon] is loneliness.
—Henry Kissinger
Topics: Loneliness

University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.
—Henry Kissinger

I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.
—Henry Kissinger
Topics: Legacy, Autobiography

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

The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.
—Henry Kissinger
Topics: Decisions, Absence

Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
—Henry Kissinger
Topics: Power

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

Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.
—Henry Kissinger
Topics: Adversity

Even a paranoid can have enemies.
—Henry Kissinger
Topics: Enemies, Enemy

No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time.
—Henry Kissinger
Topics: Decisions, Focus, Concentration, Realistic Expectations

Moderation is a virtue only in those who are thought to have an alternative.
—Henry Kissinger
Topics: Moderation

The true conservative is not at home in social struggle. He will attempt to avoid unbridgeable schism, because he knows that a stable social structure thrives not on triumphs but on reconciliations.
—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
Topics: Responsibility

Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision.
—Henry Kissinger
Topics: Leaders, Vision, Leadership

Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.
—Henry Kissinger
Topics: Leadership, Leaders

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

The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerilla wins if he does not lose.
—Henry Kissinger
Topics: Success

The vietnam war required us to emphasize the national interest rather than abstract principles. … What President Nixon and I tried to do was unnatural. And that is why we didn’t make it.
—Henry Kissinger

The most fundamental problem of politics, which is not the control of wickedness but the limitation of righteousness.
—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
Topics: War, Fear, Opportunities, Reality, Anxiety

When you meet the president, you ask yourself, “How did it ever occur to anybody that he should be governor much less president?
—Henry Kissinger
Topics: Government

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