Henry Kissinger
Power is the great aphrodisiac.Collection: Great
You can't make war in the Middle East without Egypt and you can't make peace without Syria.Collection: Peace
The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.Collection: Leadership
Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision.Collection: Great
No foreign policy - no matter how ingenious - has any chance of success if it is born in the minds of a few and carried in the hearts of none.Collection: Success
A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone.Collection: Alone
The nice thing about being a celebrity is that, if you bore people, they think it's their fault.Collection: Famous
It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise.Collection: History
The statesman's duty is to bridge the gap between his nation's experience and his vision.Collection: Experience
Everybody has a hacking capability. And probably every intelligence service is hacking in the territory of other countries. But who exactly does what? That would be a very sensitive piece of information. But it's very difficult to communicate about it. Because nobody wants to admit the scope of what they're doing.Collection: Intelligence
Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.Collection: Politics
No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time.Collection: War
Diplomacy: the art of restraining power.Collection: Power
Art is man's expression of his joy in labor.Collection: Art
I don't see the wisdom in modern politicians that I once saw in men like Dean Acheson, David Bruce, or George Marshall. In my day, the northeastern establishment dominated foreign policy formulation, but the composition and distribution of our population is very different today.Collection: Wisdom
It is, after all, the responsibility of the expert to operate the familiar and that of the leader to transcend it.Collection: Leadership
There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.Collection: Funny
People are generally amazed that I would take an interest in any forum that would require me to stop talking for three hours.Collection: Amazing
Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.Collection: Success
The attitude of the West and of Russia towards a crisis like Ukraine is diametrically different. The West is trying to establish the legality of any established border. For Russia, Ukraine is part of the Russian patrimony.Collection: Attitude
America has fought five wars since 1945 and has gained its objectives in only one of them, the Gulf War.Collection: War
Moderation is a virtue only in those who are thought to have an alternative.Collection: Funny
University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.Collection: Politics
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.Collection: War
I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.
The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself.
The American temptation is to believe that foreign policy is a subdivision of psychiatry.
If I should ever be captured, I want no negotiation - and if I should request a negotiation from captivity they should consider that a sign of duress.
Most foreign policies that history has marked highly, in whatever country, have been originated by leaders who were opposed by experts.
There is obviously a gap between the public's perception of the role of U.S. foreign policy and the elite's perception.
I think that America's recovery of a global strategic view is an absolutely essential element of our foreign policy.
I have not endorsed Trump and will not do so.
My view of my role is that together with like-minded men and women, I could help contribute to a bipartisan view of American engagement in the world for another period; I could do my part to overcome this really, in a way, awful period in which we are turning history into personal recriminations, depriving our political system of a serious debate.
Every first-term president has to learn something after he comes into office. Nobody can be completely ready for the inevitable crises.
Donald Trump is a phenomenon that foreign countries haven't seen. So it is a shocking experience to them that he came in to office.
I think when the president of the United States calls for military action, he should do it for a united people, especially when the methods have been so cruel, so explicitly directed at Americans.
There has come into being a kind of a Shia belt from Tehran through Baghdad to Beirut. And this gives Iran the opportunity to reconstruct the ancient Persian Empire - this time under the Shia label.
I think we would find, if you study the conduct of guerilla-type wars, that the Obama Administration has hit more targets on a broader scale than the Nixon Administration ever did.
I don't ascribe to myself any special competence in economic insight. I translate what I hear from highly intelligent people into political and philosophical propositions.
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 conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose.
If you don't know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately.
Accept everything about yourself - I mean everything, You are you and that is the beginning and the end - no apologies, no regrets.
Even a paranoid can have enemies.
High office teaches decision making, not substance. It consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it. Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered; they learn how to make decisions but not what decisions to make.
The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.
We are all the President's men.
The Vietnam War was a great tragedy for our country. And it is now far enough away so that one can study without using the slogans to see what's really happened.