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
Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
—Henry Kissinger
Topics: Power
The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerilla wins if he does not lose.
—Henry Kissinger
Topics: Success
Intellectuals are cynical and cynics have never built a cathedral.
—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
Military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy.
—Henry Kissinger
Topics: The Military
There can’t be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
—Henry Kissinger
Topics: Crises, Trouble
Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision.
—Henry Kissinger
Topics: Leaders, Leadership, Vision
If it’s going to come out eventually, better have it come out immediately.
—Henry Kissinger
Topics: Politicians, Politics
I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.
—Henry Kissinger
Topics: Autobiography, Legacy
Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.
—Henry Kissinger
Topics: Leaders, Leadership
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
The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.
—Henry Kissinger
Topics: Decisions, Absence
Even a paranoid can have enemies.
—Henry Kissinger
Topics: Enemy, Enemies
It is, after all, the responsibility of the expert to operate the familiar and that of the leader to transcend it.
—Henry Kissinger
Topics: Professionalism, Experts
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: Anxiety, Opportunities, War, Fear, Reality
Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.
—Henry Kissinger
Topics: Politicians, Reputation, Politics
The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself.
—Henry Kissinger
Topics: Independence
Nixon had three goals: to win by the biggest electoral landslide in history; to be remembered as a peacemaker; and to be accepted by the ‘Establishment’ as an equal. He achieved all these objectives at the end of 1972 and the beginning of 1973. And he lost them all two months later-partly because he turned a dream into an obsession
—Henry Kissinger
Topics: Accomplishment
No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time.
—Henry Kissinger
Topics: Realistic Expectations, Decisions, Concentration, Focus
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
Vietnam was what we had instead of happy childhoods.
—Henry Kissinger
If we do what is necessary, all the odds are in our favor.
—Henry Kissinger
Moderation is a virtue only in those who are thought to have an alternative.
—Henry Kissinger
Topics: Moderation
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
Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.
—Henry Kissinger
Topics: Adversity
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 illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
—Henry Kissinger
University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.
—Henry Kissinger
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Madeleine Albright Czech-born American Diplomat
- Adlai Stevenson American Diplomat
- John Foster Dulles American Politician
- R. James Woolsey, Jr. American Diplomat
- Charles G. Dawes American Diplomat, Politician
- Colin Powell American Military Leader
- George Marshall American Military Leader
- Carlos P. Romulo Philippine Diplomat
- Jimmy Carter American Head of State
- Pablo Neruda Chilean Poet
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