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History knows no resting places and no plateaus

Henry Kissinger

If you don’t know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere.
HENRY KISSINGER

Path Road Success Yourself
There can’t be a crisis next week, my schedule is already full.
HENRY KISSINGER

Funny Future
In the end, peace can be achieved only by hegemony or by balance of power.
HENRY KISSINGER

Achievement End Peace Power
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
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
Who controls the money controls the world.
HENRY KISSINGER

Control Money Power World
Behind the slogans lay an intellectual vacuum.
HENRY KISSINGER

Intellectual Politics
Policy is the art of the possible, the science of the relative.
HENRY KISSINGER

Art Policy Possible Science
Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There is too much fraternizing with the enemy.
HENRY KISSINGER

Enemy Win
Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.
HENRY KISSINGER

Animal Man Policy Stupidity
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
Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.
HENRY KISSINGER

Difficult Problem Success
Every victory is only the price of admission to a more difficult problem
HENRY KISSINGER

Difficult Price Problem Victory
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
Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
HENRY KISSINGER

One Liner Power
In effect, none of the most important countries which must build a new world order have had any experience with the multi-state system that is emerging. Never before has a new world order had to be assembled from so many different perceptions, or on so global a scale.
HENRY KISSINGER

Experience Important World
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
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
The reason that university politics is so vicious is because stakes are so small
HENRY KISSINGER

Politics Reason
Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God
HENRY KISSINGER

Blessing Destiny Eyes God Leadership People Play
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
Power without legitimacy tempts tests of strength; legitimacy without power tempts empty posturing.
HENRY KISSINGER

Empty Power Strength
When statesmen want to gain time, they offer to talk.
HENRY KISSINGER

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

Lose War
Chinese thinkers developed strategic thought that placed a premium on victory through psychological advantage and preached the avoidance of direct conflict.
HENRY KISSINGER

Avoidance Development Direction Thinking Victory
Woe to the statesman whose arguments for entering a war are not as convincing at its end as they were at the beginning, Bismarck had cautioned.
HENRY KISSINGER

Argument Beginning End War
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 knows no resting places and no plateaus

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History knows no resting places and no plateaus

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