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 KISSINGERPoor old Germany. Too big for Europe, too small for the world
More Henry Kissinger Quotes
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George Bernard Shaw: There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.
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A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone.
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The Art of War articulates a doctrine less of territorial conquest than of psychological dominance; it was the way the North Vietnamese fought America.
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Chinese thinkers developed strategic thought that placed a premium on victory through psychological advantage and preached the avoidance of direct conflict.
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Every victory is only the price of admission to a more difficult problem
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It is one of history’s ironies that Communism, advertised as a classless society, tended to breed a privileged class of feudal proportions.
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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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order without freedom, even if sustained by momentary exaltation, eventually creates its own counterpoise; yet freedom cannot be secured or sustained without a framework of order to keep the peace.
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Power without legitimacy tempts tests of strength; legitimacy without power tempts empty posturing.
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If you don’t know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere.
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The goal of the tribute system was to foster deference, not to extract economic benefit or to dominate foreign societies militarily.
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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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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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Covert action should not be confused with missionary work.
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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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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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The reason that university politics is so vicious is because stakes are so small
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I want to thank you for stopping the applause. It is impossible for me to look humble for any period of time.
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The art of crisis management is to raise the stakes to where the adversary will not follow, but in a manner that avoids a tit for tat.
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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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Woe to the statesman whose arguments for entering a war are not as convincing at its end as they were at the beginning, Bismarck had cautioned.
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Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
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There can’t be a crisis next week, my schedule is already full.
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Postcolonial countries. All have sought to overcome the legacy of colonial.
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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.
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For nations, history plays the role that character confers on human beings.
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