The Art of War articulates a doctrine less of territorial conquest than of psychological dominance; it was the way the North Vietnamese fought America.
HENRY KISSINGERPower without legitimacy tempts tests of strength; legitimacy without power tempts empty posturing.
More Henry Kissinger Quotes
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What distinguishes Sun Tzu from Western writers on strategy is the emphasis on the psychological and political elements over the purely military.
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Poor old Germany. Too big for Europe, too small for the world
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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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Behind the slogans lay an intellectual vacuum.
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History is the memory of States.
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A country that demands moral perfection in its foreign policy will achieve neither perfection nor security
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A country whose security depends on producing a genius in each generation sets itself a task no society has ever met.
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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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The issues are too important to be left for the voters.
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The Soviet Union would never be bound by agreements, Deng warned; it understood only the language of countervailing force.
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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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America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests
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For the balance of power is never static; its components are in constant flux.
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Americans hold that every problem has a solution; Chinese think that each solution is an admission ticket to a new set of problems.
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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.
HENRY KISSINGER