Henry Kissinger Quotes

• 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 Kissinger

• The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.

  Henry Kissinger

• 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 Kissinger

• The statesman’s duty is to bridge the gap between his nation’s experience and his vision.

  Henry Kissinger

• The security of Israel is a moral imperative for all free peoples.

  Henry Kissinger

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

  Henry Kissinger

• The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself.

  Henry Kissinger

• The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.

  Henry Kissinger

• The essence of Richard Nixon is loneliness.

  Henry Kissinger

• The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose.

  Henry Kissinger

• The American temptation is to believe that foreign policy is a subdivision of psychiatry.

  Henry Kissinger

• The American foreign policy trauma of the sixties and seventies was caused by applying valid principles to unsuitable conditions.

  Henry Kissinger

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

  Henry Kissinger

• No one will ever win the battle of the s*xes; there’s too much fraternizing with the enemy.

  Henry Kissinger

• 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 Kissinger

• Most foreign policies that history has marked highly, in whatever country, have been originated by leaders who were opposed by experts.

  Henry Kissinger

• Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision.

  Henry Kissinger

• Leaders are responsible not for running public opinion polls but for the consequences of their actions.

  Henry Kissinger

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

  Henry Kissinger

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

  Henry Kissinger

Henry Kissinger (64)

Birth:	27th May, 1923
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Diplomat, Political Scientist, Statesman

About

Henry Alfred Kissinger was born in Fürth, Bavaria, Germany. He is an American diplomat, statesman and political scientist. He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as United States Secretary of State in the administrations of presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. For his actions negotiating an unsuccessful ceasefire in Vietnam, Kissinger received the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize under controversial circumstances, with two members of the committee resigning in protest. He received his BA(political science), MA, and PhD(International Relations) degrees from Harvard University in 1950, 1952, and 1954. His doctoral dissertation was titled "Peace, Legitimacy, and the Equilibrium". He has written several books include: A World Restored, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy(Nominations: National Book Award for Nonfiction), American Foreign Policy, White House years(memoir), Years of Upheaval(memoir), Diplomacy, Years of Renewal(memoir), Does America Need a Foreign Policy?, Ending the Vietnam War, and On China.

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Today's Anniversary - 22nd December

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