Henry A. Kissinger Quotes
The greatest need of the contemporary international system is an agreed concept of order.
Revolutionaries are rarely motivated primarily by material considerations-though the illusion that they are persists in the West.
It is not often that nations learn from the past,even rarer that they draw the correct conclusions from it.
Countries do not assume burdens because it is fair, only because it is necessary.
Committees are consumers and sometimes sterilizers of ideas, rarely creators of them.
The British capitalize on their accent when they don't want you to know what they're saying. But if you wake them up at 4 A.M., they speak perfect English, the same as we do.
John Paul II was one of the greatest men of the last century. Perhaps the greatest.
Over time even two armed blind men in a room can do enormous damage to each other, not to speak of the room.
Well, the capacity of French intellectuals to understand a Texan way of thinking is finite.
I believe in freedom of expression, and I believe that societies thrive when they permit freedom of expression.
I want to thank you for stopping the applause. It is impossible for me to look humble for any period of time.
The convictions that leaders have formed before reaching high office are the intellectual capital they will consume as long as they continue in office.
I don't think we should pay people to fight terrorism. I would be amazed if they asked for anything in return.
I have learned, as I wrote, that history must be discovered, not declared. It's an admission that one grows in life.
I do not criticize people who take a public stand on human rights issues. I express my respect for them. But some people are more influential without a public confrontation.
Certainly not a party of the workers and the peasants. In fact, Jiang Zemin in recent weeks has officially said that capitalists and the entrepreneurs should be enrolled in the Communist Party.
I don't consider China a communist state, no. I know that sounds paradoxical, but it's my view.
The Russian empire under czars and commissars has been hard to deal with for other countries.
In my view, there's no doubt that the Soviets had infinitely greater trouble holding their structure together than we did.
I wouldn't say it's a split. It's a difference of emphasis. It does exist between, I would say, the State Department and the Defense Department.
One has to remember that every progress that has been made towards peace in the Middle East has come under American leadership.
Withdrawal of US troops will become like salted peanuts to the American public: The more US troops come home, the more will be demanded.
It is steady, reliable, tough. It never yields to panic. It is never defeated one-sidedly. It achieves everything attainable by character and tenacity.
Left to its own devices, the State Department machinery tends toward inertia rather than creativity; it is always on the verge of turning itself into an enormous cable machine.
We have three things in common: Irish wives, the ability to speak for 17 minutes without a verb, and the fact that we both speak with an accent.
For the Soul of France is masterful history, brilliantly researched, and hard to put down.
Realism in foreign policy means careful consideration of all aspects pertinent to the issue, before taking a decision. This is the only way you can move from where you are to someplace else.
The public life of every political figure is a continual struggle to rescue an element of choice from the pressure of circumstance.
To revolutionaries the significant reality is the world which they are fighting to bring about, not the world they are fighting to overcome.
I don't have a brief for every single reaction of Israel, but I think it is important that the political negotiations occur free of the threat of terrorism.
