Henry A. Kissinger Quotes, Sayings, Remarks, Thoughts and Speeches
Henry A. Kissinger Quotes and Sayings
- 1
A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 2
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 | Refcard PDF ↑
- 3
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 | Refcard PDF ↑
- 4
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 | Refcard PDF ↑
- 5
Art is man's expression of his joy in labor.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 6
Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 7
Diplomacy: the art of restraining power.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 8
Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 9
Even a paranoid can have enemies.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 10
For other nations, utopia is a blessed past never to be recovered; for Americans it is just beyond the horizon.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 11
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 | Refcard PDF ↑
- 12
I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 13
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 | Refcard PDF ↑
- 14
If eighty percent of your sales come from twenty percent of all of your items, just carry those twenty percent.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 15
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 | Refcard PDF ↑
- 16
If it's going to come out eventually, better have it come out immediately.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 17
If you don't know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 18
In crises the most daring course is often safest.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 19
It is, after all, the responsibility of the expert to operate the familiar and that of the leader to transcend it.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 20
It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 21
Leaders are responsible not for running public opinion polls but for the consequences of their actions.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 22
Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 23
Moderation is a virtue only in those who are thought to have an alternative.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 24
Most foreign policies that history has marked highly, in whatever country, have been originated by leaders who were opposed by experts.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 25
Next week there can't be any crisis. My schedule is already full.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 26
Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 27
No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 28
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 | Refcard PDF ↑
- 29
No one will ever win the battle of the sexes; there's too much fraternizing with the enemy.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 30
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 | Refcard PDF ↑
- 31
Power is the great aphrodisiac.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 32
The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 33
The American foreign policy trauma of the sixties and seventies was caused by applying valid principles to unsuitable conditions.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 34
The American temptation is to believe that foreign policy is a subdivision of psychiatry.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 35
The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 36
The essence of Richard Nixon is loneliness.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 37
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 38
The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 39
The nice thing about being a celebrity is that, if you bore people, they think it's their fault.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 40
The security of Israel is a moral imperative for all free peoples.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 41
The statesman's duty is to bridge the gap between his nation's experience and his vision.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 42
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 | Refcard PDF ↑
- 43
The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 44
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 | Refcard PDF ↑
- 45
There can't be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 46
There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 47
To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 48
University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 49
We are all the President's men.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 50
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 | Refcard PDF ↑
- 51
Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 52
While we should never give up our principles, we must also realize that we cannot maintain our principles unless we survive.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
- 53
You can't make war in the Middle East without Egypt and you can't make peace without Syria.
Henry A. Kissinger | Refcard PDF ↑
