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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.

Henry Kissinger

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

Important Issue Vote
Order always requires a subtle balance of restraint, force, and legitimacy.
HENRY KISSINGER

Force Rule
If history teaches anything it is that there can be no peace without equilibrium and no justice without restraint.
HENRY KISSINGER

History Justice Peace Teaching
A country whose security depends on producing a genius in each generation sets itself a task no society has ever met.
HENRY KISSINGER

Genius Security
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

Ambitious Care Career Important Thinking
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
Because complexity inhibits flexibility, early choices are especially crucial.
HENRY KISSINGER

Choice Early Habit Important
Intellectuals analyze the operations of international systems; statesmen build them.
HENRY KISSINGER

Intellectual Politics
A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone.
HENRY KISSINGER

Alone Deserve Leadership
Poor old Germany. Too big for Europe, too small for the world
HENRY KISSINGER

Big World
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.
HENRY KISSINGER

Creation Freedom Peace Rule
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
A diamond is a chunk of coal that did well under pressure.
HENRY KISSINGER

Improvement Inspirational Success
Americans have a tendency to believe that when there’s a problem there must be a solution.
HENRY KISSINGER

Believe Problem
Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.
HENRY KISSINGER

Politics Reputation
Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
HENRY KISSINGER

One Liner Power
I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.
HENRY KISSINGER

Book Mistake Myself
Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.
HENRY KISSINGER

Animal Man Policy Stupidity
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
It has the added advantage of being true.
HENRY KISSINGER

True
Yet freedom cannot be secured or sustained without a framework of order to keep the peace.
HENRY KISSINGER

Freedom Peace Rule Secure
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
In short, the end justifies the means.
HENRY KISSINGER

End Justice
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
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
Americans hold that every problem has a solution; Chinese think that each solution is an admission ticket to a new set of problems.
HENRY KISSINGER

Perspective Problem Thinking
The nice thing about being a celebrity is that if you bore people they think it’s their fault.
HENRY KISSINGER

Funny Mistake People Thinking Yourself

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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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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Popular Authors

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