Quotes By Henry A. Kissinger

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

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

The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.

Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately.

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

No foreign policy - no matter how ingenious - has any chance of success if it is born in the minds of a few and carried in the hearts of none.

In crises the most daring course is often safest.

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

We are all the President's men.

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

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

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

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.

Diplomacy: the art of restraining power.

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

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

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

If you don't know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere.

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

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.

The security of Israel is a moral imperative for all free peoples.

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

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.

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

I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.

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

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

Power is the great aphrodisiac.

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

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