Henry A. Kissinger Quotes - Page 11

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• One has to remember that every progress that has been made towards peace in the Middle East has come under American leadership.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Progress, Middle East, Remember

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• I would say the special experience of American wartime policy in the last 40 years, from Vietnam on, is that the war itself became controversial in the country and that the most important thing we need in the current situation is, whatever disagreements there may be on tactics, that the legitimacy of the war itself does not become a subject of controversy. We have to start with the assumption, obviously, that whatever administration is conducting a war wants to end it.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Country, War, Years

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• The public life of every political figure is a continual struggle to rescue an element of choice from the pressure of circumstance.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Struggle, Choices, Political

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• A nation riven by factions, in which the minority has no hope of ever becoming a majority, or in which some group knows it is perpetually outcast, will seem oppressive to its members, whatever the legal pretensions.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Majority, Groups, Minorities

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• In a nuclear war, even if one side were to come out ahead by systems analytical standards, both sides would be so weakened, that it would - they would be in the position of Europe after the two World Wars.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  War, Europe, Two

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• 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.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Years, Different, Matter

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Almost every peace process that has gone on between the Arab side and Israel, the United States has been somewhat isolated because most of the countries in the world, what they really want is to accept the Arab peace plan or so-called peace plan, which in its present form would lead to the destruction of Israel.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Country, Israel, United States

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• Jews were segregated from 1933 on. We could only play against other Jewish teams. This wasn't just social segregation; this was the beginning of the extermination of the Jews. That's why my family left Germany in 1938.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Team, Play, Germany

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

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Commitment, Generosity, Aristocracy

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• I have great respect for the Taiwanese. They have done an extraordinary job. But it was not a sustainable position to say that the legitimate government of China resides in Taiwan, which at that time didn't have much contact with the mainland.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Jobs, Government, Taiwan

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Certainly not a party of the workers and the peasants. In fact, Jiang Zemin in recent weeks has officially said that capitalists and the entrepreneurs should be enrolled in the Communist Party.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Party, Entrepreneur, Facts

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• To revolutionaries the significant reality is the world which they are fighting to bring about, not the world they are fighting to overcome.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Fighting, Reality, Overcoming

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• I don't have a brief for every single reaction of Israel, but I think it is important that the political negotiations occur free of the threat of terrorism.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Thinking, Israel, Political

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• One of the hardest things for the president is to distinguish the routine issues that come through from the essential issues that affect the long term, and not to let himself get sucked into the battles of the bureaucracy for marginal issues, and to keep them focused and to keep his mind clear on what the fundamental things are that he has to accomplish.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Long, Mind, Battle

  Source: www.cbsnews.com

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• Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Office, Perception, Intellectual Capital

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• 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.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Eight, Government, Years

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• 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.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Saws, Firsts, Building

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• 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.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Thinking, Shapes, Should

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• Administration has managed the extraordinary feat of having, at one and the same time, the worst relations with our allies, the worst relations with our adversaries, and the most serious upheavals in the developing world since the end of the Second World War.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  War, Presidential, Administration

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• China had never had to deal in a world of countries of approximately equal strength, and so to adjust to such a world, is in itself a profound challenge to China, which now has fourteen countries on its borders, some of which are small, but can project their nationality into China, some of which are large, and historically significant, so that any attempt by Chinese to dominate the world, would involve in a disastrous for the peace of the world.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Country, Profound, Challenges

  YouTube Channel "Fahad Barakat"/"The Munk Debates - Does the 21st Century Belong to China?", www.youtube.com. November 03, 2017.

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• Becoming conscious is of course a sacrilege against nature; it is as though you had robbed the unconscious of something. The nice thing about being a celebrity is that if you bore people they think it's their fault.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Nice, Thinking, People

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• Our nation is uniquely endowed to play a creative and decisive role in the new order which is taking form around us.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Order, Play, Creative

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

  Henry A. Kissinger

  History, Greek, Tragedy

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• Some of the critics viewed Vietnam as a morality play in which the wicked must be punished before the final curtain and where any attempt to salvage self-respect from the outcome compounded the wrong. I viewed it as a genuine tragedy. No one had a monopoly on anguish.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Military, Self, Play

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• We are all the President's men.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Loyalty, Men, President

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