Top 281 Quotes & Sayings by Henry A. Kissinger
Explore popular quotes and sayings by Henry A. Kissinger.
Last updated on December 3, 2024.
The issues are too important to be left for the voters.
For the West, the demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one. Putin is a serious strategist – on the premises of Russian history. Understanding US values and psychology are not his strong suits. Nor has understanding Russian history and psychology been a strong point among US policymakers.’
To be an enemy of America can be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal
In the end, peace can be achieved only by hegemony or by balance of power.
NAFTA represents the single most creative step towards a New World Order.
Today, America would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order. Tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told that there were an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by the World Government
Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people.
Every success is usually an admission ticket to a new set of decisions.
Superstars strive for approbation; heroes walk alone. Superstars crave consensus; heroes define themselves by the judgment of a future they see it as their task to bring about. Superstars seek success in a technique for eliciting support; heroes pursue success as the outgrowth of inner values.
What we in America call terrorists are really groups of people that reject the international system
Democracy is too important to leave up to the votes of the people.
Oil is much too important a commodity to be left in the hands of the Arabs.
The true conservative is not at home in social struggle. He will attempt to avoid unbridgeable schism, because he knows that a stable social structure thrives not on triumphs but on reconciliations.
For any student of history, change is the law of life. Any attempt to contain it guarantees an explosion down the road; the more rigid the adherence to the status quo, the more violent the ultimate outcome will be.
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.
How to Achieve The New World Order
Let us fashion together a new world order.
It is barely conceivable that there are people who like war.
There is no realism without an element of idealism.
Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed.
Nothing is more urgent than a serious, dare I say compassionate, debate as to where we are going at home and abroad. Technicians cannot master revolutions; every great achievement was an idea before it became a reality. Cathedrals cannot be built by those who are paralyzed by doubt or consumed by cynicism. If a society loses the capacity for great conception, it can be administered but not governed.
[The New World Order] cannot happen without U.S. participation, as we are the most significant single component. Yes, there will be a New World Order, and it will force the United States to change it's perceptions.
The one thing man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by a World Government, a New World Order.
Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.
It is not a matter of what is true that counts, but a matter of what is perceived to be true.
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.
U.S. policy toward the third world should be one of depopulation
It is one of history's ironies that Communism, advertised as a classless society, tended to breed a privileged class of feudal proportions.
It is not often that nations learn from the past,even rarer that they draw the correct conclusions from it.
If you control the food, you control a nation. If you control the energy, you control a region. If you control the money, you control the world.
In 10 years, there will be no more Israel.
If you do not know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere
An Iranian moderate is one who has run out of ammunition.
Before the Freedom of Information Act, I used to say at meetings "The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer." [...] But since the Freedom of Information Act, I'm afraid to say things like that.
Donald Trump is a phenomenon that foreign countries haven't seen.
Donald Rumsfeld is the most ruthless man I have ever met? and I mean that as a compliment.
A diamond is a chunk of coal that is made good under pressure.
The US must carry out some act somewhere in the world which shows its determination to continue to be a world power.
The enemies you make by taking a decided stand generally have more respect for you than the friends you make by being on the fence
Americans believe that you can alter people by conversion, and that everybody in the world is a potential American. The Chinese also believe that their values are universal, but they do not believe that you can convert to becoming a Chinese unless you are born into it.
Clearly security without values is like a ship without a rudder. But values without security are like a rudder without a ship.
The reason prophets are so rarely honored in their own country is that their role is to transcend the limits of their contemporaries' experience and imagination. They achieve recognition only when their vision has been turned into experience - in short, when it is too late to benefit from their foresight.
Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the third world, because the US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries
The elderly are useless eaters.
World population needs to be decreased by 50%
Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed. History is a tale of efforts that failed, or aspirations that weren’t realized. So, as a historian, one has to live with a sense of the inevitability of tragedy.
I think that his [Obama's] task will be to develop an overall strategy for America in this period, when really a New World Order can be created.
China is a country with a record of continuous self-government going back 4,000 years, the only society that has achieved this. One must start with the assumption that they must have learnt something about the requirements for survival, and it is not always to be assumed that we know it better than they do.
An expert is someone who articulates the needs of those in power.
The test of policy is how it ends, not how it begins. Foreign policy is the art of establishing priorities. Demonization is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one. The test is not absolute satisfaction but balanced dissatisfaction.
I know Hillary Clinton as a person. And as a personal friend, I would say yes, she'd be a good president. But she'd put me under a great conflict of interest if she were a candidate because I intend to support the Republicans.
The Western concept of democracy is based on the idea that the loser of an election has the possibility next time round of being the winner. But in the case of an ethnically or religiously divided country, in which minorities don't live peacefully together, this necessary balance can't be properly guaranteed by democracy. When each ethnic group arms itself, it is not surprising that the army of a new state is viewed by part of the population as an ideological militia.
Would food be considered an instrument of national power? ... Is the U.S. prepared to accept food rationing to help people who can't/won't control their population growth?
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.
Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.
America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.
I don't stand on protocol. Just call me your Excellency.
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.
The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been. The public does not fully understand the world into which it is going. Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision. Those leaders who do not are ultimately judged failures, even though they may be popular at the moment.
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