Henry Alfred Kissinger is a Nobel Peace Prize winner, American politician, diplomat, and geopolitical consultant who served as United States Secretary of State and National Security Advisor. Profoundly inspirational Henry Kissinger quotes will encourage growth in life, make you wiser and broaden your perspective.
Famous Henry Kissinger Quotes
Diplomacy the art of restraining power. Henry Kissinger
Corrupt politicians make the other ten percent look bad. Henry Kissinger
Most foreign policies that history has marked highly, in whatever country, have been originated by leaders who were opposed by experts. Henry Kissinger
Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There is too much fraternizing with the enemy. Henry Kissinger
You can’t make war in the Middle East without Egypt and you can’t make peace without Syria. Henry Kissinger
Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy. Henry Kissinger
For the greatest part of humanity and the longest periods of history, empire has been the typical mode of government. Henry Kissinger
It is not a matter of what is true that counts, but a matter of what is perceived to be true. Henry Kissinger
Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy. Henry Kissinger
America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests. Henry 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 Kissinger
There can’t be a crisis next week, my schedule is already full. Henry 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 Kissinger
The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been. Henry Kissinger
The American temptation is to believe that foreign policy is a subdivision of psychiatry. Henry Kissinger
Don’t be too ambitious. Do the most important thing you can think of doing every year and then your career will take care of itself. Henry Kissinger
It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise. Henry Kissinger
The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously. Henry Kissinger
For other nations, utopia is a blessed past never to be recovered; for Americans, it is just beyond the horizon. Henry Kissinger
The nice thing about being a celebrity is that if you bore people they think it’s their fault. Henry Kissinger
The statesman’s duty is to bridge the gap between his nation’s experience and his vision. Henry Kissinger
Every victory is only the price of admission to a more difficult problem. Henry Kissinger
The issues are too important to be left for the voters. Henry Kissinger
A country that demands moral perfection in its foreign policy will achieve neither perfection nor security. Henry Kissinger
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer. Henry Kissinger
Behind the slogans lay an intellectual vacuum. Henry Kissinger
University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small. Henry Kissinger
It is not often that nations learn from the past,even rarer that they draw the correct conclusions from it. Henry Kissinger
We are all the President’s men. Henry Kissinger
The state is a fragile organization, and the statesman does not have the moral right to risk its survival on ethical restraint. Henry Kissinger
Politicians are like dogs. Their life expectancy is too short for a commitment to be bearable. Henry Kissinger
The reason that university politics is so vicious is because stakes are so small. Henry Kissinger
Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem. Henry Kissinger
It is one of history’s ironies that Communism, advertised as a classless society, tended to breed a privileged class of feudal proportions. Henry Kissinger
If eighty percent of your sales come from twenty percent of all of your items, just carry those twenty percent. Henry Kissinger
Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God. Henry Kissinger
Americans have a tendency to believe that when there’s a problem there must be a solution. Henry Kissinger
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. Henry Kissinger
Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision. Henry Kissinger
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. Henry Kissinger
Don’t be too ambitious. Do the most important thing you can think of doing every year and then your career will take care of itself. Henry Kissinger
Intellectuals analyze the operations of international systems; statesmen build them. Henry Kissinger
Empires have no interest in operating within an international system; they aspire to be the international system. Henry Kissinger
Facts are rarely self explanatory; their significance, analysis, and interpretatio at least in the foreign policy world depend on context and relevance. Henry 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 Kissinger
Because complexity inhibits flexibility, early choices are especially crucial. Henry Kissinger
The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been. Henry Kissinger
In the end, peace can be achieved only by hegemony or by balance of power. Henry Kissinger
A diamond is a chunk of coal that did well under pressure. Henry Kissinger
To undertake a journey on a road never before traveled requires character and courage character because the choice is not obvious; courage because the road will be lonely at first. And the statesman must then inspire his people to persist in the endeavor. Henry Kissinger
Every victory is only the price of admission to a more difficult problem. Henry Kissinger
Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem. Henry Kissinger
The nice thing about being a celebrity is that, if you bore people, they think it’s their fault. Henry Kissinger
I want to thank you for stopping the applause. It is impossible for me to look humble for any period of time. Henry Kissinger
Leaders are responsible not for running public opinion polls but for the consequences of their actions. Henry Kissinger
History knows no resting places and no plateaus. Henry 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 Kissinger
If Tehran insists on combining the Persian imperial tradition with contemporary Islamic fervor, then a collision with America and, indeed, with its negotiating partners of the Six is unavoidable. Iran simply cannot be permitted to fulfill a dream of imperial rule in a region of such importance to the rest of the world. Henry Kissinger
Covert action should not be confused with missionary work. Henry Kissinger
Woe to the statesman whose arguments for entering a war are not as convincing at its end as they were at the beginning, Bismarck had cautioned. Henry Kissinger
Behind the slogans lay an intellectual vacuum. Henry Kissinger
Politicians are like dogs. Their life expectancy is too short for a commitment to be bearable. Henry Kissinger
No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time. Henry Kissinger
A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone. Henry 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 Kissinger
Realpolitik for Bismarck depended on flexibility and on the ability to exploit every available option without the constraint of ideology. Henry Kissinger
Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God. Henry Kissinger
If Chinese exceptionalism represented the claims of a universal empire, Japanese exceptionalism sprang from the insecurities of an island nation borrowing heavily from its neighbor, but fearful of being dominated by it. Henry Kissinger
There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full. Henry Kissinger
What distinguishes Sun Tzu from Western writers on strategy is the emphasis on the psychological and political elements over the purely military. Henry Kissinger
Power is the great aphrodisiac. Henry Kissinger
When statesmen want to gain time, they offer to talk. Henry Kissinger
It is, after all, the responsibility of the expert to operate the familiar and that of the leader to transcend it. Henry Kissinger
Order should not have priority over freedom. But the affirmation of freedom should be elevated from a mood to a strategy. Henry 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 Kissinger
In any of these evolutions, India will be a fulcrum of twenty first century order an indispensable element, based on its geography, resources, and tradition of sophisticated leadership, in the strategic and ideological evolution of the regions and the concepts of order at whose intersection it stands. Henry Kissinger
I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850. Henry Kissinger
United States would become the indispensable defender of the order Europe designed. Henry Kissinger
The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously. Henry Kissinger
Rarely has a diplomatic document so missed its objective as the Treaty of Versailles. Too punitive for conciliation, too lenient to keep Germany from recovering, the Treaty of Versailles condemned the exhausted democracies to constant vigilance against an irreconcilable and revanchist Germany as well as a revolutionary Soviet Union. Henry Kissinger
