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I Grew Up In Germany During The Nazi Period, And I Came To This Country When I Was 15. And Then I Had To Work In A Factory Because We Had No Resources. And I Went To Night School. So, It Was Not A Rational Ambition For Me To Become A World Statesman.

-Henry A. Kissinger

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I Grew Up In

Henry A. Kissinger

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I Grew Up In Germany During The Nazi Period, And I Came To This Country When I Was 15. And Then I Had To Work In A Factory Because We Had No Resources. And I Went To Night School. So, It Was Not A Rational Ambition For Me To Become A World Statesman.

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Baseball Is The Most Intellectual Game Because Most Of The Action Goes On In Your Head.

I Don't Know What Happens In The Next Years. But I Cannot Now Design A Policy In Which We Try To Keep China From Developing, Because In Some Years, If They Develop, They Might Be Rich Enough To Challenge Us, And Adopt The Principle That We Will Hold Down Any State That Might In The Future Become Strong. That Would Make Us A World Empire For Which We Wouldn't Have The Talents Or The Convictions.

An Expert Is Someone Who Articulates The Needs Of Those In Power.

Jews Were Segregated From 1933 On. We Could Only Play Against Other Jewish Teams. This Wasn't Just Social Segregation; This Was The Beginning Of The Extermination Of The Jews. That's Why My Family Left Germany In 1938.

I've Often Said That The Desire To Lecture China On How It Should Behave In The World Is Wrong. China Was Around For Thousands Of Years Even Before America Existed. It Could Even Be That China's Growing Power Will Allow Itself To Be Slowed Down. But As Long As This Immense Empire Doesn't Fall Apart, It Will Become An Important Factor In Global Politics.

I Grew Up As A Discriminated Minority In A Dictatorship, So Obviously The Issue Of Human Rights Is A Matter Of Concern For Me.

While We Should Never Give Up Our Principles, We Must Also Realize That We Cannot Maintain Our Principles Unless We Survive.

Any International System Must Have Two Key Elements For It To Work. One, It Has To Have A Certain Equilibrium Of Power That Makes Overthrowing The System Difficult And Costly. Secondly, It Has To Have A Sense Of Legitimacy.

Statesmen Think In Terms Of History And View Society As An Organism. Prophets Are Different Since They Believe Absolute Aims Can Be Achieved In The Foreseeable Future. More People Have Been Killed By Crusaders Than By Statesmen.

Taiwan Will Probably Not Declare Independence. The Question Isn't Independence. The Issue Is Whether Taiwan Will Declare Itself As A Sovereign Separate State. That Will Start A Huge Crisis If That Happens.

I Believe That Without Watergate We Would Have Had An Extraordinary Period Of Success With A Strong Nixon And A Still Vital Brezhnev In Power.

I Think An Appeal To American Idealism And Willingness To Sacrifice Would Be An Important Contribution, Because What Is Happening Now In Many Countries, Not Yet In The United States, But In Many European Countries, It's The Inability Of Government To Ask For Sacrifices Of Its People.

Control Oil And You Control Nations; Control Food And You Control The People.

Realism In Foreign Policy Means Careful Consideration Of All Aspects Pertinent To The Issue, Before Taking A Decision. This Is The Only Way You Can Move From Where You Are To Someplace Else.

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.

I Think China Will Do Nothing To Obstruct It, And They Probably Will Go Along With It.

History Knows No Resting Places And No Plateaus

Many Of The Scientists Have Believed That Their Contribution To Ending The Nuclear Race Is Not To Let Any New Weapons To Be Developed.

In The 1960s, I Would Have Considered China With Its Cpc An Ideologically More Dynamic Country Than The Soviet Union. But The Soviet Union Was Strategically More Threatening.

Statesman Create; Ordinary Leaders Consume. The Ordinary Leader Is Satisfied With Ameliorating The Environment, Not Transforming It; A Statesman Must Be A Visionary And An Educator.

I Don't Think That That's A Desirable Option For Us. Besides, It Wouldn't Work, Because There Are Too Many Other Countries That Are Willing To Work Economically With China. But I Don't Think The Basic Relationship Depends On Economics. It Depends On A Political Understanding Of What Is Required For Peace In Asia.

Let Me Make My Point About Vietnam. When The Nixon Initiation Came Into Office, There Were 550,000 Americans In Combat. And Ending The War Was Not A Question Of Turning Off A Television Channel. And So, Debating On How We Got There And What Judgments Were Made Was Not Going To Help Us.

One Thing I Don't Want Around Me Is A Military Intellectual. I Don't Have To Worry About You On That Score.

I Wouldn't Say It's A Split. It's A Difference Of Emphasis. It Does Exist Between, I Would Say, The State Department And The Defense Department.

A Return To The 1967 Lines And The Abandonment Of The Settlements Near Jerusalem Would Be Such A Psychological Trauma For Israel As To Endanger Its Survival.

Well, He Keeps Saying That, And As Defense Secretary, Of Course He Has To Think Of A Lot Of Potential Enemies. I Do Not Think It's A Wise Course To Articulate This Or To Base Our Policy On It. And I Do Not See Under Modern Circumstances What We Would Be Fighting About.

There Cannot Be A Crisis Next Week. My Schedule Is Already Full.

Well, The Capacity Of French Intellectuals To Understand A Texan Way Of Thinking Is Finite.

Any Fact That Needs To Be Disclosed Should Be Put Out Now Or As Quickly As Possible, Because Otherwise The Bleeding Will Not End.

Create The Impression Of Endless Willingness To Compromise And You Almost Invite Deadlines. That's The Challenge We Now Have In North Korea And Have Had In North Korea For 10 Years. In This Sense, Diplomacy And Foreign Policy And Other Elements Of Political Activity Have To Be Closely Linked And Have To Be Understood By The Negotiators

In My Life, I Have Almost Always Been On The Side Of Active Foreign Policy. But You Need To Know With Whom You Are Cooperating. You Need Reliable Partners.

President Nixon In His Inaugural Address Indicated That He Wanted An Era Of Negotiation. Our Reasoning Was That Whatever Our Ideological Differences, Whatever Our Geopolitical Differences, We Were Condemned To Coexistence By Nuclear Weapons.

Now We Have A Whole Series Of Problems - Energy, Environment, Proliferation - Which Go Beyond The Nation. And We Also Know That A Conflict Between Major Powers Would Be A Catastrophe For Which There Is No Compensation In Anything You Can Gain.

Oil Is Much Too Important A Commodity To Be Left In The Hands Of The Arabs.

If You Do Not Know Where You Are Going, Every Road Will Get You Nowhere

The Conventional Army Loses If It Does Not Win. The Guerrilla Wins If He Does Not Lose.

Committees Are Consumers And Sometimes Sterilizers Of Ideas, Rarely Creators Of Them.

Blessed Are The People Whose Leaders Can Look Destiny In The Eye Without Flinching But Also Without Attempting To Play God.

America Has Made It Very Clear In Several Administrations That If There Is An Attack By China On Taiwan, The United States Is Very Likely To Resist.

The Russian Empire Under Czars And Commissars Has Been Hard To Deal With For Other Countries.

Peace Depends Ultimately Not On Political Arrangements But On The Conscience Of Mankind.

I Have Said There Are Three Principles That Should Be Followed. One, We Should Maintain The "one China" Policy That Every American President Has Articulated, Including President Reagan. Secondly, We Should Make Clear That We Want A Peaceful Resolution. And Three, Taiwan Should Not Challenge That Arrangement In A Way That Will Provoke A Conflict. Those Are Three Perfectly Clear Principles. I Haven't Used Any Of The Other Slogans.

The Superpowers Often Behave Like Two Heavily Armed Blind Men Feeling Their Way Around A Room, Each Believing Himself In Mortal Peril From The Other, Whom He Assumes To Have Perfect Vision. Each Side Should Know That Frequently Uncertainty, Compromise, And Incoherence Are The Essence Of Policymaking. Yet Each Tends To Ascribe To The Other A Consistency, Foresight, And Coherence That Its Own Experience Belies. Of Course, Over Time, Even Two Armed Blind Men Can Do Enormous Damage To Each Other, Not To Speak Of The Room.

I Had An Opportunity To Express My Views, Yes. I Agreed With The Approach Which We Took, Namely, To Make A Distinction Between The Loss Of Life Of The Chinese Pilot And Our Military Operations Outside Territorial Waters Or Territorial Limits.

When You Travel As Secretary, One Problem You Have Is That The Press Comes With You And Wants An Immediate Result Because It Justifies Their Trip. And Sometimes The Best Result Is That You Don't Try To Get A Result But Try To Get An Understanding For The Next Time You Go To Them.

Countries Do Not Assume Burdens Because It Is Fair, Only Because It Is Necessary.

American Politics Are Normally A Result Of Pragmatic And Not Philosophical Reasoning. No One In Washington Has Said We Now Prefer Multilateralism.

Even Paranoid People Have Enemies.

For Any Student Of History, Change Is The Law Of Life. Any Attempt To Contain It Guarantees An Explosion Down The Road; The More Rigid The Adherence To The Status Quo, The More Violent The Ultimate Outcome Will Be.

In My View, There's No Doubt That The Soviets Had Infinitely Greater Trouble Holding Their Structure Together Than We Did.

University Politics Make Me Long For The Simplicity Of The Middle East.

If It's Going To Come Out Eventually, Better Have It Come Out Immediately.

We're At A Moment When The International System Is In A Period Of Change Like We Haven't Seen For Several Hundred Years. In Some Parts Of The World, The Nation State, On Which The Existing International System Was Based, Is Either Giving Up Its Traditional Aspects, Like In Europe, Or As In The Middle East, Where It Was Never Really Fully Established, It Is No Longer The Defining Element. So In Those Two Parts Of The World, There Is Tremendous Adjustment In Traditional Concepts.

Of Course, In Principle, They're Against It. We Are The Ones That Keep Asking Them What They Think About It. I Think Their Basic Concern Is A Land-based Missile Defense Of Taiwan Hooked Into The American Communications And Other Systems, Which In Effect Would Make Taiwan Then An Outpost Of The United States. That Is A Concern They Frequently Express. A Missile Defense Shield Of The United States, While They May Not Like It, It Is Not A Big Obstacle To Our Relationship.

There Are Some People Who Think That At Some Time In The Future, China May Challenge Us For Supremacy In The Pacific, And Therefore, What Do We Do Today To Prevent That? And You, Of Course, Will Say That We Will Try To Thwart Any Economic Progress In China. If We Engaged In Such A Policy, We Would Turn A Billion-plus People Into Nationalist Opponents Of The United States.

I Do Not Know What Will Happen In China Politically. I Do Know That It Is Impossible To Maintain The Communist System Or Probably Even A Strict One-party System When The Economy Becomes So Pluralistic. Now, What Form That Takes And What Institutions Will Evolve, I Do Not Have A Clear View About. I Do Not Think The United States, As A General Principle, Ought To Intervene In This.

A Diamond Is A Chunk Of Coal That Is Made Good Under Pressure.

Why Should We Flagellate Ourselves For What The Cambodians Did To Each Other?

If Peace Is Equated Simply With The Absence Of War, It Can Become Abject Pacifism That Turns The World Over To The Most Ruthless.

Each Success Only Buys An Admission Ticket To A More Difficult Problem.

Congratulations

In My Particular Case Foreign Policy Happens To Be My Hobby, My Consuming Interest. I Had Spent Decades Studying It.

We Believe That Peace Is At Hand.

If I Should Ever Be Captured, I Want No Negotiation - And If I Should Request A Negotiation From Captivity They Should Consider That A Sign Of Duress.

The Real Distinction Is Between Those Who Adapt Their Purposes To Reality And Those Who Seek To Mold Reality In The Light Of Their Purposes.

I Think Vladimir Putin Will Give Up Power.

Intelligence Is Not All That Important In The Exercise Of Power, And Is Often, In Point Of Fact, Useless.

The Challenge Is Whether China As A Rising Country, The United States As The Superpower, Can Develop A Cooperative Relationship In This Period Before Nationalism Becomes So Dominant In China As A Substitute For Communism, And A Kind Of Self-righteous Isolationism In This Country That Substitutes China For The Soviet Union.

Certainly Nothing Is Easier Than To Rewrite History. If We Had Made Taiwan A Separate State, It Would Have Led To A Fundamental Conflict With China, And Probably To War. Certainly In The Long Term, It Would Have Led To War.

The Key Decision For A Statesman Is Whether To Commit His Nation Or Not. There Is No Middle Course. Once A Great Nation Commits Itself, It Must Prevail. It Will Acquire No Kudos For Translating Its Inner Doubts Into Hesitation.

We Attempted To Try To Solve Every Problem In The World, Out Of A Sense Of Moral Obligations, And Attitudes, And Our History. But No Country Can Solve Every Problem Without Exhausting Itself. Therefore, We Have To Establish Priorities.

The Gorbachev Period Is Conceived As An Abandonment Of Historic Russian Positions. So This Is The Framework, In My View, In Which Putin Operates.

Intellectuals Are Cynical And Cynics Have Never Built A Cathedral.

University Politics Are Vicious Precisely Because The Stakes Are So Small.

Almost Every Peace Process That Has Gone On Between The Arab Side And Israel, The United States Has Been Somewhat Isolated Because Most Of The Countries In The World, What They Really Want Is To Accept The Arab Peace Plan Or So-called Peace Plan, Which In Its Present Form Would Lead To The Destruction Of Israel.

I Do Not Stand On Protocol. If You Just Call Me Excellency, It Will Be Okay.

The Issues Are Too Important To Be Left For The Voters.

I Am Being Frank About Myself In This Book. I Tell Of My First Mistake On Page 850.

People Are Now Starting To Explain The Cold War. Even In The Crises At That Time The Survival Of Millions Of People Was At Stake. And We (the Usa) Had To Threaten The Other Super Power With Retaliation To Prevent It From Doing Something To Us. Today We Live In A World In Which A Lot Of Things Are In Flux. That Creates A Lot Of Fear. But It Is Also A Time Of Great Opportunity. And I Would Call On Today's Statesmen To Not Allow Their Thinking To Be Directed By Fear.

How To Achieve The New World Order

To Revolutionaries The Significant Reality Is The World Which They Are Fighting To Bring About, Not The World They Are Fighting To Overcome.

What China Would Do, I Cannot Predict. China Has All But Given Up The Claim To The Use Of Force, Except In The Circumstance Of Taiwan Declaring Its Independence. That Is A Huge Step Forward Over What The Situation Was Many Years Ago.

Some Of The Critics Viewed Vietnam As A Morality Play In Which The Wicked Must Be Punished Before The Final Curtain And Where Any Attempt To Salvage Self-respect From The Outcome Compounded The Wrong. I Viewed It As A Genuine Tragedy. No One Had A Monopoly On Anguish.

Democracy Is Too Important To Leave Up To The Votes Of The People.

A Little Uncertainty Is Good For Everyone.

China Had Never Had To Deal In A World Of Countries Of Approximately Equal Strength, And So To Adjust To Such A World, Is In Itself A Profound Challenge To China, Which Now Has Fourteen Countries On Its Borders, Some Of Which Are Small, But Can Project Their Nationality Into China, Some Of Which Are Large, And Historically Significant, So That Any Attempt By Chinese To Dominate The World, Would Involve In A Disastrous For The Peace Of The World.

We Are Used To Dealing With Problems That Have A Solution And That Can Be Solved In A Finite Period. But We're At The Beginning Of A Long Period Of Adjustment That Does Not Have A Clear-cut Terminal Point, And In Which Our Wisdom And Sophistication And Understanding Has To Be One Of The Key Elements.

We Must Learn To Distinguish Morality From Moralizing.

Every Civilization That Has Ever Existed Has Ultimately Collapsed. History Is A Tale Of Efforts That Failed, Or Aspirations That Weren’t Realized. So, As A Historian, One Has To Live With A Sense Of The Inevitability Of Tragedy.

We Have To Be Careful In Negotiating With Iran That We Don't Create The Impression Among The Arab States And The Sunni States That We Are Working On A Condominium Between Iran And The United States, Because That Will Panic Them And Drive Them Into Making Their Own Arrangement.

Our Nation Is Uniquely Endowed To Play A Creative And Decisive Role In The New Order Which Is Taking Form Around Us.

High Office Teaches Decision Making, Not Substance. It Consumes Intellectual Capital; It Does Not Create It. Most High Officials Leave Office With The Perceptions And Insights With Which They Entered; They Learn How To Make Decisions But Not What Decisions To Make.

The Israelis Want Security. The Arabs Want Dignity. And They Consider The Demands Of Each Other As Incompatible.

Power Is The Ultimate Aphrodisiac.

Everybody Who Has Dealt With China Over An Extended Period Of Time Has Come To More Or Less The Same Conclusions. There Are Nuances Of Differences, But Not Fundamental Differences. I Think That President Bush Was Heading In This Direction, And I Have No Doubt That He Will Again Wind Up In This Position. But Right Now He Has To Be Preoccupied With The Atrocity Committed In New York And Washington.

Nafta Represents The Single Most Creative Step Towards A New World Order.

In Relations With Many Domestically Weak Countries, A Radio Transmitter Can Be A More Effective Form Of Pressure Than A Squadron B-52s.

I Have Great Respect For The Taiwanese. They Have Done An Extraordinary Job. But It Was Not A Sustainable Position To Say That The Legitimate Government Of China Resides In Taiwan, Which At That Time Didn't Have Much Contact With The Mainland.

In The Period After The Second World War, There Were Still Leaders In Europe Who Represented Weak Countries, But Possessed A Sense Of Global Foreign Policy. Nowadays, On The Other Hand, There Are Politicians Who Represent Pretty Powerful Countries, But Whose Citizens Are Not Prepared To Sacrifice Themselves For The State.

The Convictions That Leaders Have Formed Before Reaching High Office Are The Intellectual Capital They Will Consume As Long As They Continue In Office.

I Go Out With Actresses Because I'm Not Apt To Marry One.

It Is Frankly A Mistake Of Amateurs To Believe You Can Gain The Upper Hand In A Diplomatic Negotiation.

Access To Natural Resources Can Become A Question Of Survival For Many States.

Where Position Is Felt To Be A Birthright, Generosity Is Possible (though Not Guaranteed); Flexibility Is Not Inhibited By A Commitment To Perpetual Success.

Administration Has Managed The Extraordinary Feat Of Having, At One And The Same Time, The Worst Relations With Our Allies, The Worst Relations With Our Adversaries, And The Most Serious Upheavals In The Developing World Since The End Of The Second World War.

90% Of Politicians Give The Other 10% A Bad Name.

No One Will Ever Win The Battle Of The Sexes; There's Too Much Fraternizing With The Enemy.

This Is Awful. Do It Again.

Nixon Had Three Goals: To Win By The Biggest Electoral Landslide In History; To Be Remembered As A Peacemaker; And To Be Accepted By The 'establishment' As An Equal. He Achieved All These Objectives At The End Of 1972 And The Beginning Of 1973. And He Lost Them All Two Months Later-partly Because He Turned A Dream Into An Obsession.

Superstars Strive For Approbation; Heroes Walk Alone. Superstars Crave Consensus; Heroes Define Themselves By The Judgment Of A Future They See It As Their Task To Bring About. Superstars Seek Success In A Technique For Eliciting Support; Heroes Pursue Success As The Outgrowth Of Inner Values.

I Do Not Criticize People Who Take A Public Stand On Human Rights Issues. I Express My Respect For Them. But Some People Are More Influential Without A Public Confrontation.

I Believe It Is A Mistake To Isolate Arms Control From Other Areas Of Policy.

We Fought A Military War; Our Opponents Fought A Political One. We Sought Physical Attrition; Our Opponents Aimed For Our Psychological Exhaustion. In The Process We Lost Sight Of One Of The Cardinal Maxims Of Guerrilla War: The Guerrilla Wins If He Does Not Lose. The Conventional Army Loses If It Does Not Win. The North Vietnamese Used Their Armed Forces The Way A Bull-fighter Uses His Cape To Keep Us Lunging In Areas Of Marginal Political Importance.

Henceforth The Adequacy Of Any Military Establishment Will Be Tested By Its Ability To Preserve The Peace.

In A Nuclear War, Even If One Side Were To Come Out Ahead By Systems Analytical Standards, Both Sides Would Be So Weakened, That It Would - They Would Be In The Position Of Europe After The Two World Wars.

You Know, This Is A Very Strange Phenomenon. I Keep Reading That In American Newspapers, And I Keep Reading Extensive Speculations. I Meet With The Chinese Leaders Periodically, And While I Don't Say They've Endorsed The Missile Shield, It Has Not Been In The Forefront Of Their Discussions.

It Is Always Easy To Divide The World Into Idealists And Power-oriented People. The Idealists Are Presumed To Be The Noble People, And The Power-oriented People Are The Ones That Cause All The World's Trouble.

The Problem Is Russia Is A Country That Has Lost 300 Years Of Its History, In Terms Of Most Of What Was Part Of The Russian Empire In Europe, Towards Europe, Since Peter The Great, Has Been The Territory That Is No Longer Under Russian Rule.

I Don't See Why We Need To Stand By And Watch A Country Go Communist Due To The Irresponsibility Of Its Own People.

Would Food Be Considered An Instrument Of National Power? ... Is The U.s. Prepared To Accept Food Rationing To Help People Who Can't/won't Control Their Population Growth?

I Am Against Portraying China As The Demon Of The Global Community. China Has Grasped More Quickly Than Other Countries What Globalization Means And What It Demands. The Country Has Learned How To Use Other People's Innovations For Itself. India, Incidentally, Is Not Far Behind China In This Respect. Both Are Not Nations In The European Sense, But Rather Cultural Communities With Enormous Markets. The Challenge Of The Future Is To Work Out How To Deal With That.

America Has No Permanent Friends Or Enemies, Only Interests.

The Nice Thing About Being A Celebrity Is That, If You Bore People, They Think It's Their Fault.

The Enemies You Make By Taking A Decided Stand Generally Have More Respect For You Than The Friends You Make By Being On The Fence

Every Time There Has Been An Attempt To Disturb It, It Led To Two Things. It Led To Immediate Intense Conflict With China, And It Led To A Reaffirmation In The End, Because Nobody Wanted A Major Confrontation With China To This Principle Of A "one China" Policy Within Which Taiwan Is Finding A Place Now. Its Own Position Has Greatly Improved Since The Nixon Policy. It Is Richer, It Is Stronger And It Is Participating In Many International Organizations.

Well, On The American Side, Every New Administration Has To Cut Its Teeth In A Crisis, Because Before A Crisis, You Don't Really Know What Your Various Subordinates Are Thinking Under Stress.

I Don't Have A Brief For Every Single Reaction Of Israel, But I Think It Is Important That The Political Negotiations Occur Free Of The Threat Of Terrorism.

If You Mean By "military Victory" An Iraqi Government That Can Be Established And Whose Writ Runs Across The Whole Country, That Gets The Civil War Under Control And Sectarian Violence Under Control In A Time Period That The Political Processes Of The Democracies Will Support, I Don't Believe That Is Possible.

You're 18 Points Down [in The Polls]... You Might As Well Do What's Right.

I Don't Consider China A Communist State, No. I Know That Sounds Paradoxical, But It's My View.

I Can Think Of No Faster Way To Unite The American People Behind George W. Bush Than A Terrorist Attack On An American Target Overseas. And I Believe George W. Bush Will Quickly Unite The American People Through His Foreign Policy.

World Population Needs To Be Decreased By 50%

The Superpowers Often Behave Like Two Heavily Armed Blind Men Feeling Their Way Around A Room, Each Believing Himself In Mortal Peril From The Other, Whom He Assumes To Have Perfect Vision.

If You Control The Oil You Control The Country; If You Control Food, You Control The Population.

Diplomats Operate Through Deadlock, Which Is The Way By Which Two Sides Can Test Each Other's Determination. Even If They Have Egos For It Few Heads Of Government Have The Time To Resolve Stalemates, Their Meetings Are Too Short And The Demands Of Protocol Too Heavy.

It Is One Of History's Ironies That Communism, Advertised As A Classless Society, Tended To Breed A Privileged Class Of Feudal Proportions.

No Country Can Act Wisely Simultaneously In Every Part Of The Globe At Every Moment Of Time.

The Art Of Good Foreign Policy Is To Understand And To Take Into Consideration The Values Of A Society, To Realize Them At The Outer Limit Of The Possible.

I See The Future Of China As Growth. I Think That Historically China Has Often Gone Through Periods Of Consolidation, And Then Periods Of Sort Of Weakening Central Authority. They Undoubtedly Face Tremendous Challenges.

I Have Always Expressed Respect For Those People Who Make Public Declarations.

It Is Not Often That Nations Learn From The Past,even Rarer That They Draw The Correct Conclusions From It.

The Public Life Of Every Political Figure Is A Continual Struggle To Rescue An Element Of Choice From The Pressure Of Circumstance.

When I Became Security Advisor, I Became Familiar With The So-called Siop War Plans, I Called In Secretary Mcnamara And Asked Him What They Were Hiding From Me, Because I Couldn't Believe That The National Policy Would Foresee Such A Level Of Destructiveness.

Leaders Must Invoke An Alchemy Of Great Vision.

Withdrawal Of Us Troops Will Become Like Salted Peanuts To The American Public: The More Us Troops Come Home, The More Will Be Demanded.

In The Hands Of A Determined Secretary, The Foreign Service Can Be A Splendid Instrument, Staffed By Knowledgeable, Discreet, And Energetic Individuals. They Do Require Constant Vigilance Lest The Convictions That Led Them Into A Penurious Career Tempt Them To Preempt Decision-making.

Accept Everything About Yourself - I Mean Everything, You Are You And That Is The Beginning And The End - No Apologies, No Regrets.

It Was A Greek Tragedy. Nixon Was Fulfilling His Own Nature. Once It Started It Could Not End Otherwise.

Like Any Developing Country, It Has An Inequality Of Wealth. In The Chinese Case, It Is Particularly [pronounced] By The Fact That They Decided They Couldn't Make The Whole Country Move Forward Simultaneously, So They've Started Region By Region. So The Interior Regions Are Much Less Well Off Than The Coastal Regions. And This Is Certainly A Huge Challenge, Because It Produces A Flow Of Populations From The Poorer Regions To The Richer Regions.

Certainly Not A Party Of The Workers And The Peasants. In Fact, Jiang Zemin In Recent Weeks Has Officially Said That Capitalists And The Entrepreneurs Should Be Enrolled In The Communist Party.

I Have Been Observing China For More Than 30 Years And Am Impressed How Logically And Wisely It Tackles Its Problems. Obviously The International System Could Be Unbalanced By China's Rising Power - If We Don't Prepare Ourselves For The New Competitive Situation, That Is. But It Is An Economic Challenge, Not Aggression On The Level Of Hitler.

They [american Forces] Are There As An Expression Of The American National Interest To Prevent The Iranian Combination Of Imperialism And Fundamentalist Ideology From Dominating A Region On Which The Energy Supplies Of The Industrial Democracies Depend.

It Is Steady, Reliable, Tough. It Never Yields To Panic. It Is Never Defeated One-sidedly. It Achieves Everything Attainable By Character And Tenacity.

Every Success Is Usually An Admission Ticket To A New Set Of Decisions.

To Have The United States Suddenly Come Up With A Peace Proposal After A Whole Series Of Terrorist Attacks Is Going To Show To The World That This Sort Of Method Is Something That Western Societies Can't Stand.

Donald Trump Is A Phenomenon That Foreign Countries Haven't Seen.

A Leader Who Confines His Role To His People's Experience Dooms Himself To Stagnation; A Leader Who Outstrips His People's Experience Runs The Risk Of Not Being Understood.

Iraq Has To Be Made An International, And Not Just A National American Problem.

China Has Had A Long And Complex History And Has Managed To Evolve Its Own Culture For 4,000 Years. It Therefore Not Necessarily True That We Know Exactly What Is Best For The Internal Structure Of China.

Well It Did Not Make Excessive Sense To Say That 20 Million People Are The Recognized Government Of A Billion People That Have Their Own Institutions. We Did Not Change It In The Sense That We Said This Has To End, But There Was A U.n. Vote That Transferred The Legitimacy Of China From Taiwan To Beijing. Beijing Was Recognized As The Government Of All Of China. Then, Under President Carter, We Followed What The U.n. Had Already Done Eight Years Earlier.

One Of The Hardest Things For The President Is To Distinguish The Routine Issues That Come Through From The Essential Issues That Affect The Long Term, And Not To Let Himself Get Sucked Into The Battles Of The Bureaucracy For Marginal Issues, And To Keep Them Focused And To Keep His Mind Clear On What The Fundamental Things Are That He Has To Accomplish.

You Should Not Go To War For The Privilege Of Withdrawal. You Need To Define Your Objective And The Outcome, And It Cannot Be The Removal Of One Man.

In 10 Years, There Will Be No More Israel.

The History Of Things That Didn't Happen Has Never Been Written.

The Essence Of Richard Nixon Is Loneliness.

Transcendentalism

Every Civilization That Has Ever Existed Has Ultimately Collapsed.

With Respect To The Relationship Between Nuclear Weapons And The Advent Of Détente, One Has To Consider Two Things. One, The Nature Of Nuclear Weapons In Themselves, And Secondly, The Advent Of Nuclear Parity.

In Crises The Most Daring Course Is Often Safest.

The Task Of The Leader Is To Get His People From Where They Are To Where They Have Not Been.

Competing Pressures Tempt One To Believe That An Issue Deferred Is A Problem Avoided; More Often It Is A Crisis Invited.

From A Geo-strategic Point Of View, I Consider Iran A Bigger Problem Than The Islamic State. Isis Is A Group Of Adventurers With A Very Aggressive Ideology. But They Have To Conquer More And More Territory Before They Can Became A Geo-strategic, Permanent Reality. I Think A Conflict With Isis - Important As It Is - Is More Manageable Than A Confrontation With Iran.

If Eighty Percent Of Your Sales Come From Twenty Percent Of All Of Your Items, Just Carry Those Twenty Percent.

My Country's History, Mr. President, Tells Us That It Is Possible To Fashion Unity While Cherishing Diversity, That Common Action Is Possible Despite The Variety Of Races, Interests, And Beliefs We See Here In This Chamber. Progress And Peace And Justice Are Attainable. So We Say To All Peoples And Governments: Let Us Fashion Together A New World Order.

World Government

The Vietnam War Required Us To Emphasize The National Interest Rather Than Abstract Principles. What President Nixon And I Tried To Do Was Unnatural. And That Is Why We Didn't Make It.

Art Is Man's Expression Of His Joy In Labor.

In A Diplomatic Negotiation, You Always Meet The Same The Other Side All The Time. Even If You Should Succeed In Outsmarting Him Or In Pressuring Him, It Only Sets Up A Cycle In Which He Will Try To Get Even.

To Be An Enemy Of America Can Be Dangerous, But To Be A Friend Is Fatal

What Is Applicable Is To Understand That First Of All China Has Undergone A Huge Revolution In The Last Years. Anyone Who Saw China As I Did In 1971 - And For That Matter Even In 1979, Because Not Much Had Changed Between 1971 And 1979 - And Sees China Today, Knows One Is In A Different Economic System.

The Important Thing Is To Do The Right Thing. Then Credibility Will Follow.

Important Things

Before There Was The Soviet Union That Could Inflame Matters. Now You Have States Not As Powerful As The Soviet Union, But States Like Iraq, Like Iran, And To Some Extent Syria, Having Made It Possible For Some Of These Groups To Operate. So It Is A Very Difficult Situation.

The Nuclear Weapons Were Not Useful For The Achievement Of Political Objectives.

No, [the U.s.] Has Made It Clear That We Consider A Peaceful Resolution An Essential Aspect Of American Foreign Policy. This I Believe To Be A Situation Understood By China, But Again, It Is Important To Not Sound Too Truculent. Taking On A Billion-plus Chinese Is Not An Enterprise Which One Should Enter Lightly.

Well, I Don't Know Whether It Caused Anguish In China, But It Was Not A Wise Way To Proceed. But One Has To Remember That It Was The First Experience. And In A Republican Administration, There Is A Conservative Wing That Looks At China As The Last Embodiment Of Communism, Which Therefore Tends Towards A More Bellicose Rhetoric Anyway Than I Would. It's Not The Dominant Element, But Every Once In A While They Get A Crack At Public Statement.

If The Six-nation Forums Dealing With Iran And North Korea Suffer Comparable Failures, The Consequence Will Be A World Of Unchecked Proliferation, Not Controlled By Either Governing Principles Or Functioning Institutions. A Modern, Strong, Peaceful Iran Could Become A Pillar Of Stability And Progress In The Region. This Cannot Happen Unless Iran's Leaders Decide Whether They Are Representing A Cause Or A Nation - Whether Their Basic Motivation Is Crusading Or International Cooperation. The Goal Of The Diplomacy Of The Six Should Be To Oblige Iran To Confront This Choice.

In The Short Term, It Would Not Have Made It Possible To Resume Relations, Because In The Chinese Mind, The Humiliation Of China Started With The Annexation Of Taiwan By Japan. If The United States Had Suddenly Declared Taiwan As A Separate State - For Which We Would Have Had No Support Among Other Nations - The Consequences Would Have Been Giving Up Our Relationship With China And Committing Ourselves To A Long-term Conflict With China.

Nafta Is A Major Stepping Stone To The New World Order.

I Do Not Believe That Putin Intends To Leave Office In A Cold War Atmosphere With The United States.

The Emergence Of A Unified Europe Is One Of The Most Revolutionary Events Of Our Time.

Americans Believe That You Can Alter People By Conversion, And That Everybody In The World Is A Potential American. The Chinese Also Believe That Their Values Are Universal, But They Do Not Believe That You Can Convert To Becoming A Chinese Unless You Are Born Into It.

I Know Hillary Clinton As A Person. And As A Personal Friend, I Would Say Yes, She'd Be A Good President. But She'd Put Me Under A Great Conflict Of Interest If She Were A Candidate Because I Intend To Support The Republicans.

The Chinese, On The Other Hand, Were In The Position Of Having An American Military Spy Plane On A Chinese Military Base And They Had Their Own Internal Problems To Deal With. At First, The Chinese Weren't All That Belligerent. They Were Just Stalling To Get Their Own Bureaucracy In Line.

Power Is The Great Aphrodisiac.

Ninety Percent Of The Politicians Give The Other Ten Percent A Bad Reputation.

Military Men Are Just Dumb, Stupid Animals To Be Used As Pawns In Foreign Policy.

I Knew Deng Xiaoping When He Came Out Of Prison. He Had, After All, Been Imprisoned For Nearly Ten Years By Mao. I Know What China Looked Like Before He Took Over, And So In My Own Mind, I Don't Think Of Deng Xiaoping As An Oppressor. I Think Of Somebody Who, Faced With That Crisis, Made A Very Painful And Decision With Which I Cannot Agree. But I Also Think Of Him As A Great Reformer.

It Is Barely Conceivable That There Are People Who Like War.

The Task Of The Leader Is To Get His People From Where They Are To Where They Have Not Been. The Public Does Not Fully Understand The World Into Which It Is Going. Leaders Must Invoke An Alchemy Of Great Vision. Those Leaders Who Do Not Are Ultimately Judged Failures, Even Though They May Be Popular At The Moment.

Most Foreign Policies That History Has Marked Highly, In Whatever Country, Have Been Originated By Leaders Who Were Opposed By Experts.

No Foreign Policy - No Matter How Ingenious - Has Any Chance Of Success If It Is Born In The Minds Of A Few And Carried In The Hearts Of None.

It Is An Act Of Insanity And National Humiliation To Have A Law Prohibiting The President From Ordering Assassination.

Moderation Is A Virtue Only In Those Who Are Thought To Have An Alternative.

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