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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.

Henry Kissinger

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

Himself Leadership Nation People
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
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
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
Americans have a tendency to believe that when there’s a problem there must be a solution.
HENRY KISSINGER

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

Book Mistake Myself
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.
HENRY KISSINGER

Greatness History Leadership Peace Problem
Order always requires a subtle balance of restraint, force, and legitimacy.
HENRY KISSINGER

Force Rule
George Bernard Shaw: There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.
HENRY KISSINGER

Desire Heart Life Lose Tragedy Yourself
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
A country that demands moral perfection in its foreign policy will achieve neither perfection nor security
HENRY KISSINGER

Moral Perfection Policy Security
In the end, peace can be achieved only by hegemony or by balance of power.
HENRY KISSINGER

Achievement End Peace Power
The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.
HENRY KISSINGER

Absence Mindset
It’s a pity both sides can’t lose (commenting on Iran-Iraq war, 1980 – 1988)
HENRY KISSINGER

Lose War
Since Peter the Great, Russia had been expanding at the rate of one Belgium per year.
HENRY KISSINGER

Greatness Growth War
Can governmental orders be invented from scratch by intelligent thinkers, or is the range of choice limited by underlying organic and cultural realities (the Burkean view)?
HENRY KISSINGER

Choice Government Intelligence Limitation Thinking
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
A country whose security depends on producing a genius in each generation sets itself a task no society has ever met.
HENRY KISSINGER

Genius Security
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
History is the memory of States.
HENRY KISSINGER

History Memories
order without freedom, even if sustained by momentary exaltation, eventually creates its own counterpoise; yet freedom cannot be secured or sustained without a framework of order to keep the peace.
HENRY KISSINGER

Creation Freedom Peace Rule
Power without legitimacy tempts tests of strength; legitimacy without power tempts empty posturing.
HENRY KISSINGER

Empty Power Strength
Yet freedom cannot be secured or sustained without a framework of order to keep the peace.
HENRY KISSINGER

Freedom Peace Rule Secure
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
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
Poor old Germany. Too big for Europe, too small for the world
HENRY KISSINGER

Big World
In short, the end justifies the means.
HENRY KISSINGER

End Justice

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.

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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.

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Popular Authors

More Henry Kissinger Quotes