World Diversity Intelligence: Henry Kissinger quotes, USA

Sayings by Henry Kissinger

"Corrupt politicians make the other ten percent look bad.”

To be an enemy of the US is dangerous,

but to be a friend is fatal.

In Washington...the appearance of power is almost as important as the reality of it. In fact, the appearance is frequently its essential reality.

Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.

America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.

Henry Kissinger

A country that demands moral perfection in its foreign policy will achieve neither perfection nor security.

The issues are too important to be left for the voters.

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

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

Henry Kissinger

The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.

Thinking

Don't be too ambitious. Do the most important thing you can think of doing and then your career will take care of itself.

Henry Kissinger

Intellectuals analyze the operations of international systems; statesmen build them.

English Thinking vs. Systems Thinking

It is not a matter of what is true that counts, but a matter of what is perceived to be true.

Henry Kissinger

It is not often that nations learn from the past, even rarer that they draw the correct conclusions from it.

Behind the slogans lay an intellectual vacuum.

The state is a fragile organization, and the statesman does not have the moral right to risk its survival on ethical restraint.

A diamond is a chunk of coal that did well under pressure.

Henry Kissinger

One of the cardinal maxims of guerrilla war: the guerrilla wins if he does not lose; the conventional army loses if it does not win.

Cold War

World War III

Every victory is only the price of admission to a more difficult problem.

Henry Kissinger

Too great an emphasis on total mastery over specific events could upset the harmony of the universe.

Self-destruction of the Western Civilization

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

Henry Kissinger

Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There is too much fraternizing with the enemy.

Degendarization

There can't be a crisis next week,
my schedule is already full.

Henry Kissinger

Henry Alfred Kissinger is a German-born American bureaucrat, diplomat, and 1973 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the Richard Nixon administration.

Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.

Henry Kissinger