Top 40 Henry Kissinger Quotes

Accept everything about yourself – I mean everything, You are you and that is the beginning and the end – no apologies, no regrets.

Donald Trump is a phenomenon that foreign countries haven‘t seen. So it is a shocking experience to them that he came in to office.

We are all the President’s men.

I think we would find, if you study the conduct of guerilla-type wars, that the Obama Administration has hit more targets on a broader scale than the Nixon Administration ever did.

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.

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

I don’t ascribe to myself any special competence in economic insight. I translate what I hear from highly intelligent people into political and philosophical propositions.

If eighty percent of your sales come from twenty percent of all of your items, just carry those twenty percent.

The essence of Richard Nixon is loneliness.

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

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

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

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

The tragedy of America is that it entered all the wars with a consensus in favor of them, but within a defined period, the legitimacy of the war became a major domestic issue, with some people arguing that withdrawal was the only legitimate objective.

For other nations, utopia is a blessed past never to be recovered; for Americans it is just beyond the horizon.

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

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

Any fact that needs to be disclosed should be put out now or as quickly as possible, because otherwise the bleeding will not end.

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

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

The high probability is if American forces withdraw from Afghanistan and if no alternative international arrangement is made that then the historic contests between the regions and the sects will reappear, the Taliban will re-emerge, and a very complicated and maybe chaotic situation will develop.

We are moving towards a world that is reordering itself and that may appear more ordered at some periods of time, but I see no sign that we are moving towards a world order in my definition of it – namely, a system which is accepted, which is internalized by the majority of the key participants.

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

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

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

Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision.

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

In crises the most daring course is often safest.

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

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.

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.

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

If you don’t know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere.

Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton both had exceptional natural abilities. Nelson Rockefeller was very good statewide but never gained national traction.

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.

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.

I think when the president of the United States calls for military action, he should do it for a united people, especially when the methods have been so cruel, so explicitly directed at Americans.

I think that America’s recovery of a global strategic view is an absolutely essential element of our foreign policy.

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.

To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it.