Henry Kissinger quotes

Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.

The Vietnam War was a great tragedy for our country. And it is now far enough away so that one can study without using the slogans to see what's really happened.

You can't make war in the Middle East without Egypt and you can't make peace without Syria.

America has fought five wars since 1945 and has gained its objectives in only one of them, the Gulf War.

The Vietnam War was a great tragedy for our country. And it is now far enough away so that one can study without using the slogans to see what's really happened.

You can't make war in the Middle East without Egypt and you can't make peace without Syria.

Art is man's expression of his joy in labor.

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.

It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise.

Diplomacy: the art of restraining power.

Everybody has a hacking capability. And probably every intelligence service is hacking in the territory of other countries. But who exactly does what? That would be a very sensitive piece of information. But it's very difficult to communicate about it. Because nobody wants to admit the scope of what they're doing.

The nice thing about being a celebrity is that, if you bore people, they think it's their fault.

I don't see the wisdom in modern politicians that I once saw in men like Dean Acheson, David Bruce, or George Marshall. In my day, the northeastern establishment dominated foreign policy formulation, but the composition and distribution of our population is very different today.

Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.

America has fought five wars since 1945 and has gained its objectives in only one of them, the Gulf War.

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.

No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time.

Diplomacy: the art of restraining power.

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.

A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone.

Power is the great aphrodisiac.

A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone.

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.

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.

It is, after all, the responsibility of the expert to operate the familiar and that of the leader to transcend it.

University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.

No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time.

There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.

Power is the great aphrodisiac.

The attitude of the West and of Russia towards a crisis like Ukraine is diametrically different. The West is trying to establish the legality of any established border. For Russia, Ukraine is part of the Russian patrimony.

We are all the President's men.

I have been a professor, and I have been a policymaker, and as a professor, you think in terms of truth or absolutes.

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

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.

You can't make war in the Middle East without Egypt and you can't make peace without Syria.

Moderation is a virtue only in those who are thought to have an alternative.