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Because complexity inhibits flexibility, early choices are especially crucial.

Henry Kissinger

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
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.
HENRY KISSINGER

Ambitious Care Career Important Thinking
Because complexity inhibits flexibility, early choices are especially crucial.
HENRY KISSINGER

Choice Early Habit Important
Politicians are like dogs, Their life expectancy is too short for a commitment to be bearable
HENRY KISSINGER

Commitment Dog Expectation Growth Life Politics
It is not often that nations learn from the past, even rarer that they draw the correct conclusions from it.
HENRY KISSINGER

Learning Nation Past
Later I learned to improve my forecasting—if necessary by asking the visitor in advance what subjects he intended to raise with Nixon.
HENRY KISSINGER

Learning Myself Necessary
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
For Roosevelt, if a nation was unable or unwilling to act to defend its own interests, it could not expect others to respect them. Inevitably,
HENRY KISSINGER

Expectation Nation Respect
A Harvard study has shown that in fifteen cases in history where a rising and an established power interacted, ten ended in war.
HENRY KISSINGER

End Establishment History Power Rise War
Empires have no interest in operating within an international system; they aspire to be the international system.
HENRY KISSINGER

Goal Nation Reality
Power without legitimacy tempts tests of strength; legitimacy without power tempts empty posturing.
HENRY KISSINGER

Empty Power Strength
To undertake a journey on a road never before traveled requires character and courage: character because the choice is not obvious; courage because the road will be lonely at first. And the statesman must then inspire his people to persist in the endeavor.
HENRY KISSINGER

Character Choice Courage Inspirational Journey Lonely People Road Travel
Americans have a tendency to believe that when there’s a problem there must be a solution.
HENRY KISSINGER

Believe Problem
Postcolonial countries. All have sought to overcome the legacy of colonial.
HENRY KISSINGER

Oppression Rule
The goal of the tribute system was to foster deference, not to extract economic benefit or to dominate foreign societies militarily.
HENRY KISSINGER

Goal Oppression
Self-governed nations do not fill their neighbor states with spies.
HENRY KISSINGER

Nation Rule Trust

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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