Top 380 Henry Kissinger Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “We live in a wondrous time, in which the strong is weak because of his scruples and the weak grows strong because of his audacity.”

— Henry Kissinger

302. “Well, on the American side, every new administration has to cut its teeth in a crisis, because before a crisis, you don’t really know what your various subordinates are thinking under stress.”

— Henry Kissinger

303. “People are generally amazed that I would take an interest in any form that would require me to stop talking for three hours.”

— Henry Kissinger

304. “Two different people appealing to a search engine with the same question do not necessarily receive the same answers. The concept of truth is being relativized and individualized – losing its universal character.”

— Henry Kissinger

305. “Any international system must have two key elements for it to work. One, it has to have a certain equilibrium of power that makes overthrowing the system difficult and costly. Secondly, it has to have a sense of legitimacy.”

— Henry Kissinger

306. “Well, the capacity of French intellectuals to understand a Texan way of thinking is finite.”

— Henry Kissinger

307. “To revolutionaries the significant reality is the world which they are fighting to bring about, not the world they are fighting to overcome.”

— Henry Kissinger

308. “A Harvard study has shown that in fifteen cases in history where a rising and an established power interacted, ten ended in war.”

— Henry Kissinger

309. “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 Kissinger

310. “This country cannot afford to tear itself apart on a partisan basis on issues so vital to our national security.”

— Henry Kissinger

311. “Will the emerging Europe become an active participant in the construction of a new international order, or will it consume itself on its own internal issues?”

— Henry Kissinger

312. “Countries do not assume burdens because it is fair, only because it is necessary.”

— Henry Kissinger

313. “Spanish territory in Florida and Texas – the.”

— Henry Kissinger

314. “One thing I don’t want around me is a military intellectual. I don’t have to worry about you on that score.”

— Henry Kissinger

315. “What China would do, I cannot predict. China has all but given up the claim to the use of force, except in the circumstance of Taiwan declaring its independence. That is a huge step forward over what the situation was many years ago.”

— Henry Kissinger

316. “Henceforth the adequacy of any military establishment will be tested by its ability to preserve the peace.”

— Henry Kissinger

317. “I believe that there is a whole set of issues in the world – environment, proliferation, energy, cyberspace – that can only be dealt with on a global basis. The traditional patterns of national rivalry and national competition are not suitable for those cases.”

— Henry Kissinger

318. “Why should we flagellate ourselves for what the Cambodians did to each other?”

— Henry Kissinger

319. “Well, he keeps saying that, and as defense secretary, of course he has to think of a lot of potential enemies. I do not think it’s a wise course to articulate this or to base our policy on it. And I do not see under modern circumstances what we would be fighting about.”

— Henry Kissinger

320. “Every American president, regardless of party, has said that America has an intense interest in a peaceful resolution. And I think it should be left at that.”

— Henry Kissinger

321. “Especially when ultimate decisions of peace and war are involved, a strategist must be aware that bluffs may be called and must take into account the impact on his future credibility of an empty threat.”

— Henry Kissinger

322. “The poet T. S. Eliot captured this in his “Choruses from ‘The Rock’”: Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”

— Henry Kissinger

323. “Many of the scientists have believed that their contribution to ending the nuclear race is not to let any new weapons to be developed.”

— Henry Kissinger

324. “When the Chinese court deigned to send envoys abroad, they were not diplomats, but “Heavenly Envoys” from the Celestial Court.”

— Henry Kissinger

325. “Every age has its leitmotif, a set of beliefs that explains the universe, that inspires or consoles the individual by providing an explanation for the multiplicity of events impinging on him. In the medieval period, it was religion; in the Enlightenment, it was Reason; in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it was nationalism combined with a view of history as a motivating force. Science and technology are the governing concepts of our age.”

— Henry Kissinger

326. “China, until the modern age, imposed its own matrix of customs and culture on invaders so successfully that they grew indistinguishable from the Chinese people. By contrast, India transcended foreigners not by converting them to Indian religion or culture but by treating their ambitions with supreme equanimity; it integrated their achievements and their diverse doctrines into the fabric of Indian life without ever professing to be especially awed by any of them.”

— Henry Kissinger

327. “Moreover, events often move too quickly to allow for precise calculation; leaders have to make judgments based on intuitions and hypotheses that cannot be proven at the time of decision. Management of risk is as critical to the leader as analytical skill.”

— Henry Kissinger

328. “China does not want revolution; it does not want war or revenge; it simply wants the Chinese people to “bid farewell to poverty and enjoy a better life” and for China to become – in contrast to the taunting rejectionism of Mao – “the most responsible, the most civilized, and the most law abiding and orderly member of the international community.”32.”

— Henry Kissinger

329. “Russian rulers appealed to their people on the basis of their endurance, not their greatness. Russian diplomacy relied, to an extraordinary extent, on superior power. Russia rarely had allies among countries where it had not stationed military forces. Russian diplomacy tended to be power-oriented, tenaciously holding on to fixed positions and transforming foreign policy into trench warfare.”

— Henry Kissinger

330. “In conflict situations, social networking may serve as a platform to reinforce traditional social fissures as much as it dispels them. The widespread sharing of videotaped atrocities in the Syrian civil war appears to have done more to harden the resolve of the warring parties than to stop the killing, while the notorious ISIL has used social media to declare a caliphate and exhort holy war.”

— Henry Kissinger

331. “Letting Stalin lead Mao into authorizing the Korean War was the only strategic mistake Mao ever made because, in the end, the Korean War delayed Chinese unification by a century in that it led to America’s commitment to Taiwan.”

— Henry Kissinger

332. “The United States has every reason from history and geopolitics to bolster the European Union and prevent its drifting off into a geopolitical vacuum; the United States, if separated from Europe in politics, economics, and defense, would become geopolitically an island off the shores of Eurasia, and Europe itself could turn into an appendage to the reaches of Asia and the Middle East.”

— Henry Kissinger

333. “World order describes the concept held by a region or civilization about the nature of just arrangements and the distribution of power thought to be applicable to the entire world.”

— Henry Kissinger

334. “When urged to adhere to the international system’s “rules of the game” and “responsibilities,” the visceral reaction of many Chinese – including senior leaders – has been profoundly affected by the awareness that China has not participated in making the rules of the system. They are asked – and, as a matter of prudence, have agreed – to adhere to rules they had had no part in making.”

— Henry Kissinger

335. “Failure of the attempt to extinguish the newly declared State of Israel did not lead to a political settlement and the opening of state-to-state relations, as happened in most other postcolonial conflicts in Asia and Africa. Instead, it ushered in a protracted period of political rejection and reluctant armistice agreement against the background of radical groups seeking to force Israel into submission through terrorist campaigns.”

— Henry Kissinger

336. “Its requirement of frequent daily prayers made faith a way of life; its emphasis on the identity of religious and political power transformed the expansion of Islam from an imperial enterprise into a sacred obligation.”

— Henry Kissinger

337. “Like the United States, China thought of itself as playing a special role. But it never espoused the American notion of universalism to spread its values around the world. It.”

— Henry Kissinger

338. “The Middle East is caught in a confrontation akin to – but broader than – Europe’s pre-Westphalian wars of religion. Domestic and international conflicts reinforce each other. Political, sectarian, tribal, territorial, ideological, and traditional national-interest disputes merge. Religion is “weaponized” in the service of geopolitical objectives; civilians are marked for extermination based on their sectarian affiliation.”

— Henry Kissinger

339. “For nations, history plays the role that character confers on human beings.”

— Henry Kissinger

340. “Both sides are reinforced in their suspicions by the military maneuvers and defense programs of the other. Even when they are “normal” – that is, composed of measures a country would reasonably take in defense of national interest as it is generally understood – they are interpreted in terms of worst-case scenarios. Each side has a responsibility for taking care lest its unilateral deployments and conduct escalate into an arms race.”

— Henry Kissinger

341. “For Sun Tzu, victory is not simply the triumph of armed forces. Instead, it is the achievement of the ultimate political objectives that the military clash was intended to secure.”

— Henry Kissinger

342. “But unlike Machiavelli, Confucius was concerned more with the cultivation of social harmony than with the machinations of power. His themes were the principles of compassionate rule, the performance of correct rituals, and the inculcation of filial piety.”

— Henry Kissinger

343. “For centuries, the Middle Kingdom had assured its security by playing off distant barbarians against immediate neighbors. Deeply worried about Soviet expansionism, Mao adopted the same strategy in his opening to the United States.”

— Henry Kissinger

344. “Asia’s International Order and China Of all conceptions of world order in Asia, China operated the longest lasting, the most clearly defined, and the one furthest from Westphalian ideas. China has also taken the most complex journey, from ancient civilization through classical empire, to Communist revolution, to modern great-power status – a course which will have a profound impact on mankind.”

— Henry Kissinger

345. “Statesmen are not called upon only to settle easy questions. These often settle themselves. It is where the balance quivers, and the proportions are veiled in mist, that the opportunity for world-saving decisions presents itself.”

— Henry Kissinger

346. “If the Emperor strayed from the path of virtue, All Under Heaven would fall into chaos. Even natural catastrophes might signify that disharmony had beset the universe. The existing dynasty would be seen to have lost the “Mandate of Heaven” by which it possessed the right to govern: rebellions would break out, and a new dynasty would restore the Great Harmony of the universe.19.”

— Henry Kissinger

347. “App developers often rush programs to market, correcting flaws in real time, while aerospace companies do the opposite: test their jets religiously before a single customer ever sets foot.”

— Henry Kissinger

348. “If the major powers come to practice foreign policies of manipulating a multiplicity of subsovereign units observing ambiguous and often violent rules of conduct, many based on extreme articulations of divergent cultural experiences, anarchy is certain.”

— Henry Kissinger

349. “A country whose security depends on producing a genius in each generation sets itself a task no society has ever met.”

— Henry Kissinger

350. “Observe carefully; secure our position; cope with affairs calmly; hide our capacities and bide our time; be good at maintaining a low profile; and never claim leadership.40.”

— Henry Kissinger