Henry Kissinger

“Behind the slogans lay an intellectual vacuum.”

“Wer das Öl kontrolliert, ist in der Lage, ganze Nationen zu kontrollieren; wer die Nahrung kontrolliert, kontrolliert die Menschen”

“The reason that university politics is so vicious is because stakes are so small”

“Politicians are like dogs... Their life expectancy is too short for a commitment to be bearable”

“In Washington...the appearance of power is therefore almost as important as the reality of it. In fact, the appearance is frequently its essential reality”

“History is the memory of States.”

“In his essay, ‘Perpetual Peace,’ the philosopher, Immanuel Kant, argued that perpetual peace would eventually come to the world in one of two ways, by human insight or by conflicts and catastrophes of a magnitude that left humanity no other choice. We are at such a juncture.”

“America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests”

“Don't be too ambitious. Do the most important thing you can think of doing every year and then your career will take care of itself.”

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

“If Tehran insists on combining the Persian imperial tradition with contemporary Islamic fervor, then a collision with America — and, indeed, with its negotiating partners of the Six — is unavoidable. Iran simply cannot be permitted to fulfill a dream of imperial rule in a region of such importance to the rest of the world.”

“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. Each side should know that frequently uncertainty, compromise, and incoherence are the essence of policymaking. Yet each tends to ascribe to the other a consistency, foresight, and coherence that its own experience belies. Of course, over time, even two armed blind men can do enormous damage to each other, not to speak of the room.”

“She had interviewed leading personalities all over the world. Fame was sufficiently novel for me to be flattered by the company I would be keeping. I had not bothered to read her writings; her evisceration of other victims was thus unknown to me.”

“Covert action should not be confused with missionary work.”

“The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.”

“We fought a military war; our opponents fought a political one. We sought physical attrition; our opponents aimed for our psychological exhaustion. In the process we lost sight of one of the cardinal maxims of guerrilla war: the guerrilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does not win. The North Vietnamese used their armed forces the way a bull-fighter uses his cape — to keep us lunging in areas of marginal political importance.”

“A country that demands moral perfection in its foreign policy will achieve neither perfection nor security”

“A turbulent history has taught Chinese leaders that not every problem has a solution and that too great an emphasis on total mastery over specific events could upset the harmony of the universe.”

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

“The war is just when the intention that causes it to be undertaken is just. The will is therefore the principle element that must be considered, not the means... He who intends to kill the guilty sometimes faultlessly shed the blood of the innocents...'In short, the end justifies the means.”

“The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously. ”

“Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.”

“I want to thank you for stopping the applause. It is impossible for me to look humble for any period of time.”

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

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

“Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”

“History knows no resting places and no plateaus”

“It is not a matter of what is true that counts, but a matter of what is perceived to be true.”

“Corrupt politicians make the other ten percent look bad.”

“The issues are too important to be left for the voters.”

“Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There is too much fraternizing with the enemy.”

“Every victory is only the price of admission to a more difficult problem”

“There can't be a crisis next week, my schedule is already full.”