The goal of the tribute system was to foster deference, not to extract economic benefit or to dominate foreign societies militarily.
HENRY KISSINGERCorrupt politicians make the other ten percent look bad.
More Henry Kissinger Quotes
-
-
In the end, peace can be achieved only by hegemony or by balance of power.
HENRY KISSINGER -
Every victory is only the price of admission to a more difficult problem
HENRY KISSINGER -
The Soviet Union would never be bound by agreements, Deng warned; it understood only the language of countervailing force.
HENRY KISSINGER -
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 -
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.
HENRY KISSINGER -
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 -
I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.
HENRY KISSINGER -
Americans hold that every problem has a solution; Chinese think that each solution is an admission ticket to a new set of problems.
HENRY KISSINGER -
Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.
HENRY KISSINGER -
Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God
HENRY KISSINGER -
What distinguishes Sun Tzu from Western writers on strategy is the emphasis on the psychological and political elements over the purely military.
HENRY KISSINGER -
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 -
Order always requires a subtle balance of restraint, force, and legitimacy.
HENRY KISSINGER -
When statesmen want to gain time, they offer to talk.
HENRY KISSINGER -
The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.
HENRY KISSINGER