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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

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

Expectation Nation Respect
Empires have no interest in operating within an international system; they aspire to be the international system.
HENRY KISSINGER

Goal Nation Reality
The reason that university politics is so vicious is because stakes are so small
HENRY KISSINGER

Politics Reason
A country that demands moral perfection in its foreign policy will achieve neither perfection nor security
HENRY KISSINGER

Moral Perfection Policy Security
The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.
HENRY KISSINGER

Absence Mindset
For nations, history plays the role that character confers on human beings.
HENRY KISSINGER

Character History Human Nation Play
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
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
Intellectuals analyze the operations of international systems; statesmen build them.
HENRY KISSINGER

Intellectual Politics
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
Poor old Germany. Too big for Europe, too small for the world
HENRY KISSINGER

Big World
Corrupt politicians make the other ten percent look bad.
HENRY KISSINGER

Appearance Bad Politics
Covert action should not be confused with missionary work.
HENRY KISSINGER

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

Animal Man Policy Stupidity
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
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

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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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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