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" 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

Time

World

Key

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" Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately. "

" 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. "

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

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

Henry Kissinger

Office

I Am

" 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. "

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

" 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

Why

War

" 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. "

" 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. "

" The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously. "

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

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

" 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. "

" While we should never give up our principles, we must also realize that we cannot maintain our principles unless we survive. "

" Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God. "

" 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. "

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

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

" I think we would find, if you study the conduct of guerilla-type wars, that the Obama Administration has hit more targets on a broader scale than the Nixon Administration ever did. "

Henry Kissinger

Study

Think

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

" The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose. "

Henry Kissinger

Army

Guerrilla

" Art is man's expression of his joy in labor. "

" There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full. "

" To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it. "

" 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. "

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

" University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small. "

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

" The Vietnam War was a great tragedy for our country. And it is now far enough away so that one can study without using the slogans to see what's really happened. "