Henry Kissinger

Quotes

Power is the great aphrodisiac.
Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed.
A crisis does not always appear to a policymaker as a series of dramatic events. Usually it imposes itself as an exhausting agenda of petty chores demanding both concentration and endurance.
History knows no resting places and no plateaus.
Nobody will ever win the Battle of the Sexes. There's just too much fraternizing with the enemy.
No foreign policy-no matter how ingenious-has any chance of success if it is born in the minds of few and carried in the hearts of many.
Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.
The nice thing about being a celebrity is that when you bore people, they think it's their fault.
The real distinction is between those who adapt their purposes to reality and those who seek to mold reality in the light of their purposes.
Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.
No one will ever win the battle of the sexes, because there is too much fraternizing with the enemy.
The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.
No side will win the Battle of the Sexes. There's too much fraternizing with the enemy.
Art is man's expression of his joy in labor.
Corrupt politicians make the other ten percent look bad.
Deep versed in books and shallow in himself.
Diplomacy...the art of restraining power.
If eighty percent of your sales come from twenty percent of all of your items, just carry those twenty percent.
If the businessman would stop talking like a computer printout or a page from the corporate annual report, other people would stop thinking he had a cash register for a heart.
In crises the most daring course is often safest.
Moderation is a virtue only in those who are thought to have an alternative.
No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time.
People are generally amazed that I would take an interest in any form that would require me to stop talking for three hours.
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.
Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.
The American temptation is to believe that foreign policy is a subdivision of psychiatry.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
The nice thing about being a celebrity is that, if you bore people, they think it's their fault.
The Vietnam War required us to emphasize the national interest rather than abstract principles.
There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy's life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.
To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it.
University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.
Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately.
The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself.
It is not a matter of what is true that counts, but a matter of what is perceived to be true.