Henry Kissinger quotes

“Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision.”

— Henry Kissinger

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

— Henry Kissinger

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

— Henry 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 Kissinger

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

— Henry 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 Kissinger

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

— Henry Kissinger

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

— Henry Kissinger

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

— Henry Kissinger

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

— Henry Kissinger

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

— Henry Kissinger

“The essence of Richard Nixon is loneliness.”

— Henry Kissinger

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

— Henry Kissinger

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

— Henry Kissinger

“We are all the President's men.”

— Henry Kissinger

“Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately.”

— Henry 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 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 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 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 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 Kissinger