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

Henry Kissinger

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

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

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" 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. "

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" It's never happened in history that every region in the world could affect every other region simultaneously. The Roman empire and the Chinese empire didn't know much about each other and had no means of interacting. Now we have every continent able to reach every other. "

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" For other nations, utopia is a blessed past never to be recovered; for Americans it is just beyond the horizon. "

Henry Kissinger

" Diplomacy: the art of restraining power. "

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

Henry Kissinger

" I don't see the wisdom in modern politicians that I once saw in men like Dean Acheson, David Bruce, or George Marshall. In my day, the northeastern establishment dominated foreign policy formulation, but the composition and distribution of our population is very different today. "

Henry Kissinger

" 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. "

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

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

Henry Kissinger

" My view of my role is that together with like-minded men and women, I could help contribute to a bipartisan view of American engagement in the world for another period; I could do my part to overcome this really, in a way, awful period in which we are turning history into personal recriminations, depriving our political system of a serious debate. "

Henry Kissinger

" Power is the great aphrodisiac. "

Henry Kissinger

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

Henry Kissinger

" There has come into being a kind of a Shia belt from Tehran through Baghdad to Beirut. And this gives Iran the opportunity to reconstruct the ancient Persian Empire - this time under the Shia label. "

Henry Kissinger

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

Henry Kissinger

" Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately. "

Henry Kissinger

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

Henry Kissinger

" Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision. "

Henry Kissinger

" Even a paranoid can have enemies. "

Henry Kissinger

" The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer. "

Henry Kissinger

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

Henry Kissinger

" 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

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

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

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

Henry Kissinger

" The Trump phenomenon is in large part a reaction of Middle America to attacks on its values by intellectual and academic communities. There are other reasons, but this is a significant one. "

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