Henry A. Kissinger's Quotes

The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.

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

It is, after all, the responsibility of the expert to operate the familiar and that of the leader to transcend it.

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.

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

Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision.

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

People are generally amazed that I would take an interest in any form that would require me to stop talking for three hours.

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

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.

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

I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.

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

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

The American foreign policy trauma of the sixties and seventies was caused by applying valid principles to unsuitable conditions.

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

The essence of Richard Nixon is loneliness.

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

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

We are all the President's men.

Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.