A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone.
Henry A. Kissinger
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
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
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
Art is man's expression of his joy in labor.
Henry A. Kissinger
Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.
Henry A. Kissinger
Corrupt politicians make the other ten percent look bad.
Henry A. Kissinger
Deep versed in books and shallow in himself.
Henry A. Kissinger
Diplomacy: the art of restraining power.
Henry A. Kissinger
Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.
Henry A. Kissinger
Even a paranoid has some real enemies.
Henry A. Kissinger
For other nations, utopia is a blessed past never to be recovered; for Americans it is just beyond the horizon.
Henry A. Kissinger
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
Highly intelligent, superbly endowed physically, [John B. Connally] looked and acted as if he were born to lead. His build was matched by his ego - but those who aspire to the apex must not be criticized for that; they could never lead effectively without extraordinary self-confidence.
Henry A. Kissinger
I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.
Henry A. Kissinger
I can think of no faster way to unite the American people behind George W. Bush than a terrorist attack on an American target overseas. And I believe George W. Bush will quickly unite the American people through his foreign policy.
Henry A. Kissinger
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
If eighty percent of your sales come from twenty percent of all of your items, just carry those twenty percent.
Henry A. Kissinger
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
If it's going to come out eventually, better have it come out immediately.
Henry A. Kissinger
If you don't know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere.
Henry A. Kissinger
In crises the most daring course is often safest.
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
It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise.
Henry A. Kissinger
Leaders are responsible not for running public opinion polls but for the consequences of their actions.
Henry A. Kissinger
Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision.
Henry A. Kissinger
Moderation is a virtue only in those who are thought to have an alternative.
Henry A. Kissinger
Next week there can't be any crisis. My schedule is already full.
Henry A. Kissinger
Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.
Henry A. Kissinger
No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time.
Henry A. 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 A. Kissinger
No one will ever win the battle of the sexes; there's too much fraternizing with the enemy.
Henry A. Kissinger
Nothing ever engaged him so completely that he would bring to it the sacrifice of personal advancement.
Henry A. 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 A. Kissinger
Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
Henry A. Kissinger
The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.
Henry A. Kissinger
The American temptation is to believe that foreign policy is a subdivision of psychiatry.
Henry A. Kissinger
The essence of Richard Nixon is loneliness.
Henry A. Kissinger
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
Henry A. Kissinger
The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself.
Henry A. Kissinger
The nice thing about being a celebrity is that, if you bore people, they think it's their fault.
Henry A. Kissinger
The statesman's duty is to bridge the gap between his nation's experience and his vision.
Henry A. 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 A. Kissinger
The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.
Henry A. Kissinger
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
There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
Henry A. Kissinger
There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy's life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.
Henry A. Kissinger
To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it.
Henry A. Kissinger
University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.
Henry A. Kissinger
We are all the President's men.
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
Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately.
Henry A. Kissinger
When you meet the president, you ask yourself, "How did it ever occur to anybody that he should be governor much less president?"
Henry A. Kissinger
While we should never give up our principles, we must also realize that we cannot maintain our principles unless we survive.
Henry A. Kissinger
You can't make war in the Middle East without Egypt and you can't make peace without Syria.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Type:
Statesman
Date of Birth:
1923-05-27
Year of Death:
Nationality:
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