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

Henry Kissinger

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" Power is the great aphrodisiac. "

Henry Kissinger

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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 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

" The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been. "

Henry Kissinger

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

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

" The essence of Richard Nixon is loneliness. "

Henry Kissinger

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

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

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

Henry Kissinger

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

Henry Kissinger

" If it's going to come out eventually, better have it come out immediately. "

Henry Kissinger

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

Henry Kissinger

" You can't make war in the Middle East without Egypt and you can't make peace without Syria. "

Henry Kissinger

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

Henry Kissinger

" Diplomacy: the art of restraining power. "

Henry Kissinger

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

Henry Kissinger

" If eighty percent of your sales come from twenty percent of all of your items, just carry those twenty percent. "

Henry Kissinger

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

Henry Kissinger

" Even a paranoid can have enemies. "

Henry Kissinger

" 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. "

Henry Kissinger

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

Henry Kissinger

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

Henry Kissinger

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

Henry Kissinger

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

Henry Kissinger