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" The tragedy of America is that it entered all the wars with a consensus in favor of them, but within a defined period, the legitimacy of the war became a major domestic issue, with some people arguing that withdrawal was the only legitimate objective. "

Henry Kissinger

War

Within

America

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time. "

" 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. "

" The essence of Richard Nixon is loneliness. "

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

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

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

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

" Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation. "

" Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately. "

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

" Diplomacy: the art of restraining power. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Leadership is absolutely vital if there are comparable countries which can affect the security of the world you live in. Between Lincoln and Roosevelt's time, America was protected by huge oceans and, in practice, by the British navy. Today, it's different, and the obsession of the Obama administration has been for retrenchment. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

Henry Kissinger

Office

I Am

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

" The nice thing about being a celebrity is that, if you bore people, they think it's their fault. "

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

" 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. "

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

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