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 A. Kissinger Quote

Accept everything about yourself - I mean everything, You are you and that is the beginning and the end - no apologies, no regrets.
- Henry A. Kissinger Quote

Art is man's expression of his joy in labor.
- Henry A. Kissinger Quote

Diplomacy: the art of restraining power.
- Henry A. Kissinger Quote

Even a paranoid can have enemies.
- Henry A. Kissinger Quote

Even a paranoid has some real enemies.
- Henry A. Kissinger Quote

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 A. Kissinger Quote

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.
- Henry A. Kissinger Quote

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 A. Kissinger Quote

If it's going to come out eventually, better have it come out immediately.
- Henry A. Kissinger Quote

If you don't know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere.
- Henry A. Kissinger Quote

It is, after all, the responsibility of the expert to operate the familiar and that of the leader to transcend it.
- Henry A. Kissinger Quote

Leaders are responsible not for running public opinion polls but for the consequences of their actions.
- Henry A. Kissinger Quote

Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision.
- Henry A. Kissinger Quote

Moderation is a virtue only in those who are thought to have an alternative.
- Henry A. Kissinger Quote

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

Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.
- Henry A. Kissinger Quote

No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time.
- Henry A. Kissinger Quote

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.
- Henry A. Kissinger Quote

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

Power is the great aphrodisiac.
- Henry A. Kissinger Quote

Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
- Henry A. Kissinger Quote

The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.
- Henry A. Kissinger Quote

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

The American temptation is to believe that foreign policy is a subdivision of psychiatry.
- Henry A. Kissinger Quote

The essence of Richard Nixon is loneliness.
- Henry A. Kissinger Quote

The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
- Henry A. Kissinger Quote

The nice thing about being a celebrity is that, if you bore people, they think it's their fault.
- Henry A. Kissinger Quote

The statesman's duty is to bridge the gap between his nation's experience and his vision.
- Henry A. Kissinger Quote

The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.
- Henry A. Kissinger Quote

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 A. Kissinger Quote

There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
- Henry A. Kissinger Quote

There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy's life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.
- Henry A. Kissinger Quote

To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it.
- Henry A. Kissinger Quote

University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.
- Henry A. Kissinger Quote

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 A. Kissinger Quote

While we should never give up our principles, we must also realize that we cannot maintain our principles unless we survive.
- Henry A. Kissinger Quote

You can't make war in the Middle East without Egypt and you can't make peace without Syria.
- Henry A. Kissinger Quote