Henry A. Kissinger Quotes


"If eighty percent of your sales come from twenty percent of all of your items, just carry those twenty percent."
- Henry A. Kissinger
(Related: Sales)

"In crises the most daring course is often safest."
- Henry A. Kissinger
"If you don't know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere."
- Henry A. Kissinger
(Related: Road, Will)

"If it's going to come out eventually, better have it come out immediately."
- 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
(Related: Leader, Responsibility)

"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
(Related: Negotiation, Want)

"The nice thing about being a celebrity is that, if you bore people, they think it's their fault."
- Henry A. Kissinger
(Related: People, Being, Celebrity, Fault)

"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
(Related: People, Country)

"I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850."
- Henry A. Kissinger
(Related: Mistake, Being, First)

"It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise."
- Henry A. Kissinger
(Related: Nature, End, Nixon, Tragedy)

"For other nations, utopia is a blessed past never to be recovered; for Americans it is just beyond the horizon."
- Henry A. Kissinger
(Related: Americans, Nations, Past, Utopia)

"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
(Related: Success, Policy, Chance, Foreign policy)

"Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem."
- Henry A. Kissinger
(Related: Success)

"Diplomacy: the art of restraining power."
- Henry A. Kissinger
(Related: Art, Power)

"Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God."
- Henry A. Kissinger
(Related: God, People, Destiny, Eye, Leaders, Play)

"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
(Related: Decision, Decisions, Office, Perceptions)

"Power is the great aphrodisiac."
- Henry A. Kissinger
(Related: Power)

"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
(Related: Men, Vision, Blind, Feeling)

"The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer."
- Henry A. Kissinger
"The essence of Richard Nixon is loneliness."
- Henry A. Kissinger
(Related: Loneliness, Nixon)

"The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose."
- Henry A. Kissinger
(Related: Army)

"The American temptation is to believe that foreign policy is a subdivision of psychiatry."
- Henry A. Kissinger
(Related: Policy, American, Foreign policy, Psychiatry, Temptation)

"The American foreign policy trauma of the sixties and seventies was caused by applying valid principles to unsuitable conditions."
- Henry A. Kissinger
(Related: Policy, American, Foreign policy, Principles)

"Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation."
- Henry A. Kissinger
(Related: Politicians, Reputation)

"The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself."
- Henry A. Kissinger
(Related: Office)

"Leaders are responsible not for running public opinion polls but for the consequences of their actions."
- Henry A. Kissinger
(Related: Actions, Consequences, Leaders, Opinion, Public, Public opinion, Running)

"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
(Related: People, Interest, Talking)

"No one will ever win the battle of the sexes; there's too much fraternizing with the enemy."
- Henry A. Kissinger
(Related: Battle, Enemy, Sexes, Will)

"Art is man's expression of his joy in labor."
- Henry A. Kissinger
(Related: Art, Expression, Joy, Labor, Man)

"No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time."
- Henry A. Kissinger
(Related: Time, Act, Country)

"Most foreign policies that history has marked highly, in whatever country, have been originated by leaders who were opposed by experts."
- Henry A. Kissinger
(Related: History, Country, Experts, Leaders)

"Moderation is a virtue only in those who are thought to have an alternative."
- Henry A. Kissinger
(Related: Thought, Virtue, Moderation)

"Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision."
- Henry A. Kissinger
(Related: Vision, Alchemy, Leaders)

"The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously."
- Henry A. Kissinger
(Related: Absence, Mind)

"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
(Related: War, Interest, Nixon, President, Principles, Vietnam)

"While we should never give up our principles, we must also realize that we cannot maintain our principles unless we survive."
- Henry A. Kissinger
(Related: Principles)

"Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately."
- 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
(Related: Chance, Friends, Future)

"We are all the President's men."
- Henry A. Kissinger
(Related: Men, President)

"University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small."
- Henry A. Kissinger
(Related: Politics, University)

"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
(Related: End, Fact, Needs, Now, Will)

"There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full."
- Henry A. Kissinger
(Related: Crisis)

"You can't make war in the Middle East without Egypt and you can't make peace without Syria."
- Henry A. Kissinger
(Related: Peace, War)

"The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been."
- Henry A. Kissinger
(Related: Leader, People)

"The statesman's duty is to bridge the gap between his nation's experience and his vision."
- Henry A. Kissinger
(Related: Experience, Vision, Duty, Nation)

"The security of Israel is a moral imperative for all free peoples."
- Henry A. Kissinger
(Related: Israel, Security)

"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
(Related: Apologies, Beginning, End)

"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
(Related: Experience, Leader, People, Being, Risk)

"A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone."
- Henry A. Kissinger
(Related: Leader, Name)

"To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it."
- Henry A. Kissinger
(Related: Nothing)