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.
Author
Henry A. Kissinger
29 quotations
About Henry A. Kissinger
Henry Alfred Kissinger was an American diplomat, political scientist, and politician. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the 7th national security advisor from 1969 to 1975 and as the 56th United States secretary of state from 1973 to 1977, serving under presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.
Read on Wikipedia → Find books by Henry A. KissingerYou can't make war in the Middle East without Egypt and you can't make peace without Syria.
No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time.
No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time.
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.
Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.
Diplomacy: the art of restraining power.
Power is the great aphrodisiac.
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University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.
Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.
You can't make war in the Middle East without Egypt and you can't make peace without Syria.
It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise.
It is, after all, the responsibility of the expert to operate the familiar and that of the leader to transcend it.
A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone.
The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.
Most foreign policies that history has marked highly, in whatever country, have been originated by leaders who were opposed by experts.
It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise.
Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision.
Power is the great aphrodisiac.
Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.
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.
Moderation is a virtue only in those who are thought to have an alternative.
There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
The statesman's duty is to bridge the gap between his nation's experience and his vision.
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.