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Quotes by Henry A. Kissinger

A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone.
– Henry A. Kissinger
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.
– Henry A. Kissinger
Accept everything about yourself - I mean everything, You are you and that is the beginning and the end - no apologies, no regrets.
– Henry A. Kissinger
Any fact that needs to be disclosed should be put out now or as quickly as possible, because otherwise the bleeding will not end.
– Henry A. Kissinger
Art is man's expression of his joy in labor.
– Henry A. Kissinger
Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.
– Henry A. Kissinger
Deep versed in books and shallow in himself.
– Henry A. Kissinger
Diplomacy: the art of restraining power.
– Henry A. Kissinger
Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.
– Henry A. Kissinger
Even a paranoid has some real enemies.
– Henry A. Kissinger
For other nations, utopia is a blessed past never to be recovered; for Americans it is just beyond the horizon.
– Henry A. Kissinger
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.
– Henry A. Kissinger
Highly intelligent, superbly endowed physically, [John B. Connally] looked and acted as if he were born to lead. His build was matched by his ego - but those who aspire to the apex must not be criticized for that; they could never lead effectively without extraordinary self-confidence.
– Henry A. Kissinger
I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.
– Henry A. Kissinger
I can think of no faster way to unite the American people behind George W. Bush than a terrorist attack on an American target overseas. And I believe George W. Bush will quickly unite the American people through his foreign policy.
– Henry A. Kissinger
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.
– Henry A. Kissinger
If eighty percent of your sales come from twenty percent of all of your items, just carry those twenty percent.
– Henry A. Kissinger
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.
– Henry A. Kissinger
If it's going to come out eventually, better have it come out immediately.
– Henry A. Kissinger
If you don't know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere.
– Henry A. Kissinger
In crises the most daring course is often safest.
– Henry A. Kissinger
It is, after all, the responsibility of the expert to operate the familiar and that of the leader to transcend it.
– Henry A. Kissinger
It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise.
– Henry A. Kissinger
Leaders are responsible not for running public opinion polls but for the consequences of their actions.
– Henry A. Kissinger
Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision.
– Henry A. Kissinger
Moderation is a virtue only in those who are thought to have an alternative.
– Henry A. Kissinger
Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.
– Henry A. Kissinger
No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time.
– Henry A. Kissinger
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.
– Henry A. Kissinger
No one will ever win the battle of the sexes; there's too much fraternizing with the enemy.
– Henry A. Kissinger
Nothing ever engaged him so completely that he would bring to it the sacrifice of personal advancement.
– Henry A. Kissinger
People are generally amazed that I would take an interest in any form that would require me to stop talking for three hours.
– Henry A. Kissinger
Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
– Henry A. Kissinger
The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.
– Henry A. Kissinger
The American temptation is to believe that foreign policy is a subdivision of psychiatry.
– Henry A. Kissinger
The essence of Richard Nixon is loneliness.
– Henry A. Kissinger
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
– Henry A. Kissinger
The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself.
– Henry A. Kissinger
The statesman's duty is to bridge the gap between his nation's experience and his vision.
– Henry A. Kissinger
The superpowers often behave like two heavily armed blind men feeling their way around a room, each believing himself in mortal peril from the other, whom he assumes to have perfect vision.
– Henry A. Kissinger
The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.
– Henry A. Kissinger
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.
– Henry A. Kissinger
There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
– Henry A. Kissinger
There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy's life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.
– Henry A. Kissinger
To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it.
– Henry A. Kissinger
University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.
– Henry A. Kissinger
We are all the President's men.
– Henry A. Kissinger
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.
– Henry A. Kissinger
Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately.
– Henry A. Kissinger
When you meet the president, you ask yourself, How did it ever occur to anybody that he should be governor much less president?
– Henry A. Kissinger
While we should never give up our principles, we must also realize that we cannot maintain our principles unless we survive.
– Henry A. Kissinger
You can't make war in the Middle East without Egypt and you can't make peace without Syria.
– Henry A. Kissinger
Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed.
– Henry A. Kissinger
The nice thing about being a celebrity is that when you bore people, they think it's their fault.
– Henry A. Kissinger
The real distinction is between those who adapt their purposes to reality and those who seek to mold reality in the light of their purposes.
– Henry A. Kissinger
Power is the great aphrodisiac.
– Henry A. Kissinger
Most foreign policies that history has marked highly, in whatever country, have been originated by leaders who were opposed by experts.
– Henry A. Kissinger