Policy is the art of the possible, the science of the relative.
HENRY KISSINGERBehind the slogans lay an intellectual vacuum.
More Henry Kissinger Quotes
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The issues are too important to be left for the voters.
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The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
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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)?
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Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
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In short, the end justifies the means.
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If chess is about the decisive battle, wei qi is about the protracted campaign. The chess player aims for total victory. The wei qi player seeks relative advantage.
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Yet freedom cannot be secured or sustained without a framework of order to keep the peace.
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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.
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The goal of the tribute system was to foster deference, not to extract economic benefit or to dominate foreign societies militarily.
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Because complexity inhibits flexibility, early choices are especially crucial.
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The mindset for walking lonely political paths may not be self-evident to those who seek confirmation by hundreds, sometimes thousands of friends on Facebook.
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A Harvard study has shown that in fifteen cases in history where a rising and an established power interacted, ten ended in war.
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Who controls the money controls the world.
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A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone.
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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.
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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.
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Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
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I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.
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The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.
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Later I learned to improve my forecasting—if necessary by asking the visitor in advance what subjects he intended to raise with Nixon.
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It is not a matter of what is true that counts, but a matter of what is perceived to be true.
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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.
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Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God
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Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There is too much fraternizing with the enemy.
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The Art of War articulates a doctrine less of territorial conquest than of psychological dominance; it was the way the North Vietnamese fought America.
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There can’t be a crisis next week, my schedule is already full.
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