The state is a fragile organization, and the statesman does not have the moral right to risk its survival on ethical restraint.
HENRY KISSINGERWhen statesmen want to gain time, they offer to talk.
More Henry Kissinger Quotes
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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,
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Order always requires a subtle balance of restraint, force, and legitimacy.
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If history teaches anything it is that there can be no peace without equilibrium and no justice without restraint.
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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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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.
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It has the added advantage of being true.
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In his essay, ‘Perpetual Peace,’ the philosopher, Immanuel Kant, argued that perpetual peace would eventually come to the world in one of two ways, by human insight or by conflicts and catastrophes of a magnitude that left humanity no other choice. We are at such a juncture.
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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 war is just when the intention that causes it to be undertaken is just. The will is therefore the principle element that must be considered, not the means, He who intends to kill the guilty sometimes faultlessly shed the blood of the innocents
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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.
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A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone.
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When statesmen want to gain time, they offer to talk.
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Empires have no interest in operating within an international system; they aspire to be the international system.
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History is the memory of States.
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Since Peter the Great, Russia had been expanding at the rate of one Belgium per year.
HENRY KISSINGER