Quotes from Henry Kissinger

The issues are too important to be left for the voters.

A diamond is a chunk of coal that did well under pressure.

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

It is not often that nations learn from the past,even rarer that they draw the correct conclusions from it.

Behind the slogans lay an intellectual vacuum.

Poor old Germany. Too big for Europe, too small for the world

The state is a fragile organization, and the statesman does not have the moral right to risk its survival on ethical restraint.

In his essay, 'Perpetual Peace,' the philosopher, Immanuel Kant, argued that perpetual peace would eventually come to the world in one of two ways, by human insight or by conflicts and catastrophes of a magnitude that left humanity no other choice. We are at such a juncture.

Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God

It is one of history's ironies that Communism, advertised as a classless society, tended to breed a privileged class of feudal proportions.

We fought a military war; our opponents fought a political one. We sought physical attrition; our opponents aimed for our psychological exhaustion. In the process we lost sight of one of the cardinal maxims of guerrilla war: the guerrilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does not win. The North Vietnamese used their armed forces the way a bull-fighter uses his cape — to keep us lunging in areas of marginal political importance.

A turbulent history has taught Chinese leaders that not every problem has a solution and that too great an emphasis on total mastery over specific events could upset the harmony of the universe.

In Washington...the appearance of power is therefore almost as important as the reality of it. In fact, the appearance is frequently its essential reality

Intellectuals analyze the operations of international systems; statesmen build them.

For other nations, utopia is a blessed past never to be recovered; for Americans it is just beyond the horizon.

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

The Trump phenomenon is in large part a reaction of Middle America to attacks on its values by intellectual and academic communities. There are other reasons, but this is a significant one.

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

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

No one will win the battle of the sexes, there is too much flirting with the enemy.

Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. Theres too much fraternizing with the enemy.

Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There is too much fraternizing with the enemy.

Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There?s too much fraternizing with the enemy.