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Because complexity inhibits flexibility, early choices are especially crucial.

Henry Kissinger

For the balance of power is never static; its components are in constant flux.
HENRY KISSINGER

Philosophy Power Science
The state is a fragile organization, and the statesman does not have the moral right to risk its survival on ethical restraint.
HENRY KISSINGER

Moral Right Risk Survive
It is not a matter of what is true that counts, but a matter of what is perceived to be true.
HENRY KISSINGER

Deep Philosophy True
Order always requires a subtle balance of restraint, force, and legitimacy.
HENRY KISSINGER

Force Rule
A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone.
HENRY KISSINGER

Alone Deserve Leadership
If Chinese exceptionalism represented the claims of a universal empire, Japanese exceptionalism sprang from the insecurities of an island nation borrowing heavily from its neighbor, but fearful of being dominated by it.
HENRY KISSINGER

Fear Insecurity Nation Represent
It is one of history’s ironies that Communism, advertised as a classless society, tended to breed a privileged class of feudal proportions.
HENRY KISSINGER

Class History Oneself
History knows no resting places and no plateaus
HENRY KISSINGER

History Nature Place
The issues are too important to be left for the voters.
HENRY KISSINGER

Important Issue Vote
A more immediate issue concerns North Korea, to which Bismarck’s nineteenth-century aphorism surely applies: We live in a wondrous time, in which the strong is weak because of his scruples and the weak grows strong because of his audacity.
HENRY KISSINGER

Growth Issue Live Strong Time Weakness Wonderful
Every victory is only the price of admission to a more difficult problem
HENRY KISSINGER

Difficult Price Problem Victory
The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.
HENRY KISSINGER

Absence Mindset
For nations, history plays the role that character confers on human beings.
HENRY KISSINGER

Character History Human Nation Play
The Art of War articulates a doctrine less of territorial conquest than of psychological dominance; it was the way the North Vietnamese fought America.
HENRY KISSINGER

Art Fight War
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
HENRY KISSINGER

Legal Politics Time
Empires have no interest in operating within an international system; they aspire to be the international system.
HENRY KISSINGER

Goal Nation Reality

Because complexity inhibits flexibility, early choices are especially crucial.

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Because complexity inhibits flexibility, early choices are especially crucial.

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