Best 290 quotes of Henry A. Kissinger on MyQuotes

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

University politics make me long for the simplicity of the Middle East.

U.S. policy toward the third world should be one of depopulation

We are all the President's men.

We are doomed to coexist.

We are used to dealing with problems that have a solution and that can be solved in a finite period. But we're at the beginning of a long period of adjustment that does not have a clear-cut terminal point, and in which our wisdom and sophistication and understanding has to be one of the key elements.

We attempted to try to solve every problem in the world, out of a sense of moral obligations, and attitudes, and our history. But no country can solve every problem without exhausting itself. Therefore, we have to establish priorities.

We believe that peace is at hand.

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.

We cannot give Russia veto over deployment of forces on NATO territory. But we have to understand their particular sensitivities, and, therefore, there should be a dialogue on these issues.

We first became conscious of the plane publicly on a Monday. I thought then by the weekend it would be done. But then the Chinese military, the defense minister made a statement saying that if there was no apology from the United States, the Chinese military and the Chinese people would never understand. No reference to the government or the Communist Party, and that obviously presented an internal problem to the Chinese leadership, which was travelling at that moment.

We have three things in common: Irish wives, the ability to speak for 17 minutes without a verb, and the fact that we both speak with an accent.

We have to be careful in negotiating with Iran that we don't create the impression among the Arab states and the Sunni states that we are working on a condominium between Iran and the United States, because that will panic them and drive them into making their own arrangement.

Well, he keeps saying that, and as defense secretary, of course he has to think of a lot of potential enemies. I do not think it's a wise course to articulate this or to base our policy on it. And I do not see under modern circumstances what we would be fighting about.

Well, I don't know whether it caused anguish in China, but it was not a wise way to proceed. But one has to remember that it was the first experience. And in a Republican administration, there is a conservative wing that looks at China as the last embodiment of communism, which therefore tends towards a more bellicose rhetoric anyway than I would. It's not the dominant element, but every once in a while they get a crack at public statement.

Well it did not make excessive sense to say that 20 million people are the recognized government of a billion people that have their own institutions. We did not change it in the sense that we said this has to end, but there was a U.N. vote that transferred the legitimacy of China from Taiwan to Beijing. Beijing was recognized as the government of all of China. Then, under President Carter, we followed what the U.N. had already done eight years earlier.

Well, on the American side, every new administration has to cut its teeth in a crisis, because before a crisis, you don't really know what your various subordinates are thinking under stress.

Well, the capacity of French intellectuals to understand a Texan way of thinking is finite.

We're at a moment when the international system is in a period of change like we haven't seen for several hundred years. In some parts of the world, the nation state, on which the existing international system was based, is either giving up its traditional aspects, like in Europe, or as in the Middle East, where it was never really fully established, it is no longer the defining element. So in those two parts of the world, there is tremendous adjustment in traditional concepts.

What China would do, I cannot predict. China has all but given up the claim to the use of force, except in the circumstance of Taiwan declaring its independence. That is a huge step forward over what the situation was many years ago.

What is applicable is to understand that first of all China has undergone a huge revolution in the last years. Anyone who saw China as I did in 1971 - and for that matter even in 1979, because not much had changed between 1971 and 1979 - and sees China today, knows one is in a different economic system.

What political leaders decide, intelligence services tend to seek to justify.

What we in America call terrorists are really groups of people that reject the international system

Whenever a new president comes in, people that are used to the previous president wonder if he has the same capacity.

With proper tactics, nuclear war need not be as destructive as it appears.

When I became security advisor, I became familiar with the so-called SIOP war plans, I called in Secretary McNamara and asked him what they were hiding from me, because I couldn't believe that the National policy would foresee such a level of destructiveness.

When I first saw China, there were no automobiles. There were no supermarkets. There were no high-rise buildings. There were no consumer goods. There were no restaurants that were at least accessible that foreigners could see. It was a Stalinist society, and a very poor Stalinist society. So the economic system has totally changed, and the private sector in the economic system is now the dominant sector. It didn't exist at all as late as 1979.

When you travel as secretary, one problem you have is that the press comes with you and wants an immediate result because it justifies their trip. And sometimes the best result is that you don't try to get a result but try to get an understanding for the next time you go to them.

Where position is felt to be a birthright, generosity is possible (though not guaranteed); flexibility is not inhibited by a commitment to perpetual success.

While we should never give up our principles, we must also realize that we cannot maintain our principles unless we survive.

Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.

Withdrawal of US troops will become like salted peanuts to the American public: The more US troops come home, the more will be demanded.

With respect to the relationship between nuclear weapons and the advent of détente, one has to consider two things. One, the nature of nuclear weapons in themselves, and secondly, the advent of nuclear parity.

World population needs to be decreased by 50%

Would food be considered an instrument of national power? ... Is the U.S. prepared to accept food rationing to help people who can't/won't control their population growth?

You become a superpower by being strong but also by being wise and by being farsighted. But no state is strong or wise enough to create a world order alone.

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

You know, this is a very strange phenomenon. I keep reading that in American newspapers, and I keep reading extensive speculations. I meet with the Chinese leaders periodically, and while I don't say they've endorsed the missile shield, it has not been in the forefront of their discussions.

You should not go to war for the privilege of withdrawal. You need to define your objective and the outcome, and it cannot be the removal of one man.

You should not think that you can shape history only by your will. This is also why I'm against the concept of intervention when you don't know its ultimate implications.