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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.

Henry Kissinger

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.
HENRY KISSINGER

Evidence Friendship Lonely Mindset Path Walk
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 KISSINGER

Art Fight War
For the balance of power is never static; its components are in constant flux.
HENRY KISSINGER

Philosophy Power Science
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
Because complexity inhibits flexibility, early choices are especially crucial.
HENRY KISSINGER

Choice Early Habit Important
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
Chinese thinkers developed strategic thought that placed a premium on victory through psychological advantage and preached the avoidance of direct conflict.
HENRY KISSINGER

Avoidance Development Direction Thinking Victory
In the end, peace can be achieved only by hegemony or by balance of power.
HENRY KISSINGER

Achievement End Peace Power
Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God
HENRY KISSINGER

Blessing Destiny Eyes God Leadership People Play
The goal of the tribute system was to foster deference, not to extract economic benefit or to dominate foreign societies militarily.
HENRY KISSINGER

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

Politics Reason
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

Class History Oneself
Empires have no interest in operating within an international system; they aspire to be the international system.
HENRY KISSINGER

Goal Nation Reality
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 Live Strong Time Weakness
Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.
HENRY KISSINGER

Politics Reputation
There can’t be a crisis next week, my schedule is already full.
HENRY KISSINGER

Funny Future
The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.
HENRY KISSINGER

Absence Mindset
I want to thank you for stopping the applause. It is impossible for me to look humble for any period of time.
HENRY KISSINGER

Humble Impossible Myself Praise Stop Thankful Time
Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.
HENRY KISSINGER

Difficult Problem Success
Since Peter the Great, Russia had been expanding at the rate of one Belgium per year.
HENRY KISSINGER

Greatness Growth War
The issues are too important to be left for the voters.
HENRY KISSINGER

Important Issue Vote
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.
HENRY KISSINGER

Human Humanity Nature Peace Philosophy World
The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.
HENRY KISSINGER

Himself Leadership Nation People
The state is a fragile organization, and the statesman does not have the moral right to risk its survival on ethical restraint.
HENRY KISSINGER

Moral Right Risk Survive
If you don’t know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere.
HENRY KISSINGER

Path Road Success Yourself
For nations, history plays the role that character confers on human beings.
HENRY KISSINGER

Character History Human Nation Play
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
HENRY KISSINGER

Legal Politics Time

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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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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