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Henry Kissinger
84 quotes
“[T]he most fundamental problem of politics, which is not the control of wickedness but the limitation of righteousness.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) first seen 1812 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace, 1812-22 (1957), p. 206
“In some respects the intellectual has never been more in demand; that he makes such a relatively small contribution is not because he is rejected but because his function is misunderstood. He is sought after enthusiastically but for the wrong reasons and in pursuit of the wrong purposes.... All too often what the policymaker wants from the intellectual is not ideas but endorsement.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) first seen 1959 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Policymaker and the Intellectual, Reporter (March 5, 1959), 30, 33.
“I...was a little puzzled by your suggestion that we should return to a diplomacy like Bismarck's. Having once planned to write a book on Bismarck's diplomacy and, indeed, having finished half of it, I could think of few policies more likely to lead to catastrophe in present circumstances.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: LOC, G-13, HAK to Michael Howard (July 31, 1961).
“The frequently voiced view that we should conduct our diplomacy so as to bring about a rift between Communist China and the USSR.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If Communist China agrees to renounce the use of force in the formosa strait, we could consider opening up channels of non-official contact... journalists, students, tourists, etc.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) first seen 1962 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: LOC, Position Papers (April 11, 1962)
“What has come to be called the balance of terror may seem less frightful to fanatics leading a country with a population of 600 millions. Even a war directed explicitly against centers of population may seem to it tolerable and perhaps the best means of dominating the world. Chou En-lai is reported to have told a Yugoslav diplomat that an all-out nuclear war would leave 10 million Americans, 20 million Russians, and 350 million Chinese.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Where eminence must be reached by endless struggle, leaders may collapse at the top, drained of creativity, or they may be inclined to use in high office the methods by which they reached it. When political leaders are characterized primarily by their quest for power, when they decide to seek office first and search for issues later, then their technique to maintain power is necessarily short-range and manipulative.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) first seen 1967 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Et Caesar, Et Nullus", Reporter (June 1, 1967), 51f.
“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 (1923–2023) first seen 1969 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Vietnam Negotiations", Foreign Affairs, Vol. 48, No. 2 (January 1969), p. 214; also quoted as "A conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerilla army wins if he does not lose.
“There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) first seen 1969 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The New York Times Magazine (June 1, 1969)
“I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) first seen 1970 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Meeting of the "40 Committee" on covert action in Chile (June 27, 1970) quoted in The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (1974); the quotation was censored prior to publication due to legal action by the government. See T…
“[Nixon] wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. He doesn't want to hear anything about it. It's an order, to be done. Anything that flies on anything that moves.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) first seen 1970 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Phone call with Gen. Alexander Haig (December 9, 1970) quoted in National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 123. The quotation was an excerpt from one of several phone conversations in which Kissinger ridicu…
“Intellectuals are cynical and cynics have never built a cathedral.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) first seen 1966 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Sketchbook 1966-1971 (1971) by Max Frisch, p. 230
“Power is the great aphrodisiac.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) first seen 1971 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The New York Times (January 19, 1971). See Michael C. Thomsett and Jean Freestone Thomsett War and Conflict Quotations: A Worldwide Dictionary of Pronouncements from Military Leaders, Politicians, Philosophers, Writers …
“It is barely conceivable that there are people who like war.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) first seen 1971 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Transcript of telephone conversation with the poet and antiwar activist Allen Ginsberg from the National Security Archive (April 23, 1971)
“[Referring to the people of India] They are superb flatterers, Mr. President. They are masters at flattery. They are masters at subtle flattery. That’s how they survived 600 years. They suck up — their great skill is to suck up to people in key positions. (June 17, 1971)”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I tell you, the Pakistanis are fine people, but they are primitive in their mental structure. [...] They just don't have the subtlety of the Indians. (August 10, 1971)”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) first seen 2020 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In conversation with Richard Nixon. Quoted in Gary J. Bass "The Terrible Cost of Presidential Racism" The New York Times (September 3, 2020)
“I've always acted alone. Americans like that immensely. Americans like the cowboy who leads the wagon train by riding ahead alone on his horse, the cowboy who rides all alone into the town, the village, with his horse and nothing else. Maybe even without a pistol, since he doesn't shoot. He acts, that's all, by being in the right place at the right time. In short, a Western. … This amazing, romantic character suits me precisely because to be alone has always been part of my style or, if you like, my technique.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) first seen 1972 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Oriana Fallaci (November 1972), as quoted in "Oriana Fallaci and the Art of the Interview" in Vanity Fair (December 2006); Kissinger, as quoted in "Special Section: Chagrined Cowboy" in Time magazine (Oct…
“The accumulation of nuclear arms has to be constrained if mankind is not to destroy itself.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) first seen 1974 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Press conference held on (February 13, 1974)
“If we do not get a recognition of our interdependence, the Western civilization that we now have is almost certain to disintegrate. (October 1974)”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Adapted from Niall Ferguson, THE SQUARE AND THE TOWER: Networks and Power, from Freemasons to Facebook, Penguin Press, 2017. As quoted in Niall Ferguson, The Secret to Henry Kissinger's success (January 20, 2018)”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think of myself as a historian more than as a statesman. As a historian, you have to be conscious of the fact that every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed. History is a tale of efforts that failed, of aspirations that weren't realized, of wishes that were fulfilled and then turned out to be different from what one expected. So, as a historian, one has to live with a sense of the inevitability of tragedy. As a statesman, one has to act on the assumption that problems must be solved.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) first seen 1974 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in an interview with The New York Times (October 13, 1974)
“Wherever a lessening of population pressures through reduced birth rates can increase the prospects for such stability, population policy becomes relevant to resource supplies and to the economic interests of the United States.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If it were not for the accident of my birth, I would be anti-Semitic.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Any people [Jews] who have been persecuted for two thousand years must be doing something wrong.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) first seen 1973 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The Washington Post (December 23, 1973); he later joked further on this remark, on 10 March 1975 saying to Turkish Foreign Minister Melih Esenbel in Ankara, Turkey:
“How many people did (Khmer Rouge Foreign Minister Ieng Sary) kill? ... Tens of thousands?”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You should tell the Cambodians (i.e., Khmer Rouge) that we will be friends with them. They are murderous thugs, but we won't let that stand in the way. We are prepared to improve relations with them. Tell them the latter part, but don’t tell them what I said before.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) first seen 1975 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: meeting with Thai foreign minister National Security Archive (November 26, 1975), p. 3, 8
“In the 1950s and 1960s we put several thousand nuclear weapons into Europe. To be sure, we had no precise idea of what to do with them.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) first seen 1973 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Statement of 1973, as quoted in Canadian and World Politics (2005) by John Ruypers, Marion Austin, Patrick Carter, and Terry G. Murphy
“The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy. And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) first seen 1973 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Statement of 1973, as quoted in "In Tapes, Nixon Rails About Jews and Blacks" in The New York Times (10 December 2010).
“Covert action should not be confused with missionary work.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) first seen 1975 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: To the House Intelligence Committee in 1975 on his abandonment of the Kurds
“The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) first seen 1978 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in "Special Section: They Are Fated to Succeed" in Time magazine (2 January 1978)
“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. Each side should know that frequently uncertainty, compromise, and incoherence are the essence of policymaking. Yet each tends to ascribe to the other a consistency, foresight, and coherence that its own experience belies. Of course, over time, even two armed blind men can do enormous damage to each other, not to speak of the room.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The White House Years (1979)
“Nelson Rockefeller, I am certain, would have made a great President. He possessed in abundance the qualities of courage and vision that are the touchstones of leadership. But at the moments when his goal might have been realized, in 1960 and again in 1968, he uncharacteristically hesitated. In the service of his beliefs he could be cold-blooded and ruthless; he was incredibly persistent. Yet there was in him a profound ambivalence.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The White House Years (1979)
“In contemporary America, power increasingly gravitates to those with an almost obsessive desire to win it. Whoever does not devote himself monomaniacally to the nominating process, whoever is afraid of it or disdains it, will always be pursuing a mirage, however remarkable his other qualifications. With candidates for the highest office, as with athletes, everything depends upon timing, upon an intuitive ability to seize the opportunity.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The White House Years (1979)
“As Kissinger complained to the president, “We are the ones who have been operating against our public opinion, against our bureaucracy, at the very edge of legality.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) first seen 1969 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: FRUS: Documents on South Asia, 1969–1972, vol. E-7 (online at http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76ve07), White House tapes, Oval Office 637-3, 12 December 1971, 8:45–9:42 a.m. Hereafter cited as FRUS…
“We are the ones who have been operating against our public opinion, against our bureaucracy, at the very edge of legality.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Kissinger to Nixon, quoted in Bass, G. J. (2014). The Blood telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a forgotten genocide.
“If the President had his way, we’d have a nuclear war every week.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Henry Kissinger on Nixon, as quoted in Bass, G. J. (2014). The Blood telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a forgotten genocide. chapter 19
“The security of Israel is a moral imperative for all free peoples.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) first seen 1977 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: See For the Record: Selected Statements 1977-1980, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1981.
“Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The End of the Road (1982), Ch. 25 "Years of Upheaval
“If you believe that their real intention is to kill you, it isn't unreasonable to believe that they would lie to you.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) first seen 1988 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Observation made privately, quoted by Time journalist Michael Kramer, The Case for Skepticism Time, (26 December 1988), in the context of doubts about PLO sincerity in hinting about recognition of Israel.
“I was working for Kennedy in those days, and [Truman] said what I had learned from Kennedy, and I said, "I've learned that the president can't do everything he wants because the bureaucracy is the fourth branch of government." ... He said, "The trouble with Kennedy is he has too many opinions. A president has to know what he wants to do.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) first seen 1992 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Oral History Interviews With Dr. Henry Kissinger", Harry S. Truman National Historic Site, May 7, 1992
“A country that demands moral perfection in its foreign policy will achieve neither perfection nor security.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) first seen 1994 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Reflections on Containment", Foreign Affairs, Vol. 73, No. 3 (June 1994), p. 130
“Empires have no interest in operating within an international system; they aspire to be the international system. Empires have no need for a balance of power. That is how the United States has conducted its foreign policy in the Americas, and China through most of its history in Asia.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) first seen 1994 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diplomacy (1994), p. 21
“The study of history offers no manual of instructions that can be applied automatically; history teaches by analogy, shedding light on the likely consequences of comparable situations.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) first seen 1994 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diplomacy (1994)
“[T]he bargaining position of the victor always diminishes with time. Whatever is not exacted during the shock of defeat becomes increasingly difficult to attain later — a lesson America had to learn with respect to Iraq at the end of the 1991 Gulf War.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) first seen 1994 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diplomacy (1994)
“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 (1923–2023) first seen 1994 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diplomacy (1994)
“For nearly twenty years, Bismarck preserved the peace and eased international tension with his moderation and flexibility. But he paid the price of misunderstood greatness, for his successors and would-be imitators could draw no better lesson from his example than multiplying arms and waging a war which would cause the suicide of European civilization.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) first seen 1994 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diplomacy (1994)
“Gorbachev knew what his problems were but he acted both too fast and too slowly: too fast for the tolerance of his system, and too slowly to arrest the accelerating collapse.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) first seen 1994 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diplomacy (1994)
“Nixon was one of the most gifted of American Presidents, prepared to make tough decisions and courageous in doing so. But he needed solitude for such an act. Face-to-face, Nixon was obsessively incapable of overruling an interlocutor or even disagreeing with him.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) first seen 1999 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Years of Renewal (1999)
“The domestic divisions that grew out of Vietnam were generally treated in the public discourse as a clash between those who were "for" the war and those who were "against" it. That, however, was not the fundamental issue. Every administration in office during the Vietnam war sought to end it - nearly desperately. The daunting and heartrending question was how to define this goal.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ending the Vietnam War: A History of America's Involvement in and Extrication from the Vietnam War (2003)