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" A president has an inescapable responsibility to provide direction: What are we trying to achieve? What are we trying to prevent? Why? To do that, he has to both analyze and reflect. "

Henry Kissinger

Why

Trying

Responsibility

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

" 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. "

Henry Kissinger

Russia

Crisis

" In crises the most daring course is often safest. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Every first-term president has to learn something after he comes into office. Nobody can be completely ready for the inevitable crises. "

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

" 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. "

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

" Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Moderation is a virtue only in those who are thought to have an alternative. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

" I have spoken to Chinese leaders occasionally on human rights, but I've always done it in private. "

" I have been a professor, and I have been a policymaker, and as a professor, you think in terms of truth or absolutes. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" Power is the great aphrodisiac. "

" There is obviously a gap between the public's perception of the role of U.S. foreign policy and the elite's perception. "