Quotes By Henry A. Kissinger

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

The American foreign policy trauma of the sixties and seventies was caused by applying valid principles to unsuitable conditions.

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

Power is the great aphrodisiac.

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

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

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

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

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

You can't make war in the Middle East without Egypt and you can't make peace without Syria.

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

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

The essence of Richard Nixon is loneliness.

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.

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

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

Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision.

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

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

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

Even a paranoid can have enemies.