Quotes from Henry Kissinger

Even a paranoid can have enemies.

Leadership is absolutely vital if there are comparable countries which can affect the security of the world you live in. Between Lincoln and Roosevelt's time, America was protected by huge oceans and, in practice, by the British navy. Today, it's different, and the obsession of the Obama administration has been for retrenchment.

America has fought five wars since 1945 and has gained its objectives in only one of them, the Gulf War.

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.

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

Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

Power is the great aphrodisiac.

The history of things that didn't happen has never been written.

The illegal we do immediately the unconstitutional takes a little longer.

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 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.

The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.

In crises the most daring course is often safest.

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.

Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately.

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 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 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.

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

Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.

I have been a professor, and I have been a policymaker, and as a professor, you think in terms of truth or absolutes.

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.

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