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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.

-Henry A. Kissinger

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If The Six-nation Forums

Henry A. Kissinger

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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.

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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.

We Are All The President's Men.

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For The West, The Demonization Of Vladimir Putin Is Not A Policy; It Is An Alibi For The Absence Of One. Putin Is A Serious Strategist – On The Premises Of Russian History. Understanding Us Values And Psychology Are Not His Strong Suits. Nor Has Understanding Russian History And Psychology Been A Strong Point Among Us Policymakers.’

It Is Not A Matter Of What Is True That Counts, But A Matter Of What Is Perceived To Be True.

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.

Whenever A New President Comes In, People That Are Used To The Previous President Wonder If He Has The Same Capacity.

Revolutionaries Are Rarely Motivated Primarily By Material Considerations-though The Illusion That They Are Persists In The West.

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

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.

Most High Officials Leave Office With The Perceptions And Insights With Which They Entered.

Intellectual Capital

Leaders Are Responsible Not For Running Public Opinion Polls But For The Consequences Of Their Actions.

If A Chinese Plane Landed At Los Angeles Airport Having Just Bought Down An American Military Plane, He Wouldn't Be Permitted To Leave The Next Day. So Then We Developed A Framework Which Should Have Been Acceptable As A Concept To The Chinese, Namely To Express Regret For The Loss Of Life And Maintain Our Position That We Had A Right To Fly These Missions.

People Think Responsibility Is Hard To Bear. It's Not. I Think That Sometimes It Is The Absence Of Responsibility That Is Harder To Bear. You Have A Great Feeling Of Impotence.

The Western Concept Of Democracy Is Based On The Idea That The Loser Of An Election Has The Possibility Next Time Round Of Being The Winner. But In The Case Of An Ethnically Or Religiously Divided Country, In Which Minorities Don't Live Peacefully Together, This Necessary Balance Can't Be Properly Guaranteed By Democracy. When Each Ethnic Group Arms Itself, It Is Not Surprising That The Army Of A New State Is Viewed By Part Of The Population As An Ideological Militia.

Even A Paranoid Can Have Enemies.

Our Greatest Foreign Policy Problem Is Our Divisions At Home. Our Greatest Foreign Policy Need Is National Cohesion And A Return To The Awareness That In Foreign Policy We Are All Engaged In A Common National Endeavor.

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.

We Must Learn To Distinguish Morality From Moralizing.

We Cannot Give Russia Veto Over Deployment Of Forces On Nato Territory. But We Have To Understand Their Particular Sensitivities, And, Therefore, There Should Be A Dialogue On These Issues.

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

The Absence Of Alternatives Clears The Mind Marvelously.

I Think A Resumption Of The Cold War Would Be A Historic Tragedy. If A Conflict Is Avoidable, On A Basis Reflecting Morality And Security, One Should Try To Avoid It.

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.

There Is No Realism Without An Element Of Idealism.

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.

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.

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.

I Think Vladimir Putin Will Give Up Power.

I Think That His [obama's] Task Will Be To Develop An Overall Strategy For America In This Period, When Really A New World Order Can Be Created.

The Statesman's Duty Is To Bridge The Gap Between His Nation's Experience And His Vision.

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

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

We Believe That Peace Is At Hand.

Power Is The Ultimate Aphrodisiac.

The British Capitalize On Their Accent When They Don't Want You To Know What They're Saying. But If You Wake Them Up At 4 A.m., They Speak Perfect English, The Same As We Do.

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

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

In Crises The Most Daring Course Is Often Safest.

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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.

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

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

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.

A Country That Demands Moral Perfection In Its Foreign Policy Will Achieve Neither Perfection Nor Security.

Leaders Must Invoke An Alchemy Of Great Vision.

The American Temptation Is To Believe That Foreign Policy Is A Subdivision Of Psychiatry.

Historically When There Is A Rising Power Like China, It Has Usually Led To Confrontations Between The Rising Power And The Existing Dominant Powers. And When You Have A Shift Of The Center Of Gravity Of World Affairs From The Atlantic To The Pacific, Then You Have An Additional Element.

History Is Not, Of Course, A Cookbook Offering Pretested Recipes. It Teaches By Analogy, Not By Maxims. It Can Illuminate The Consequences Of Actions In Comparable Situations, Yet Each Generation Must Discover For Itself What Situations Are In Fact Comparable.

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 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.

We Have Three Things In Common: Irish Wives, The Ability To Speak For 17 Minutes Without A Verb, And The Fact That We Both Speak With An Accent.

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.

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

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

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

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World Population Needs To Be Decreased By 50%

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

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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 One Thing Man Fears Is The Unknown. When Presented With This Scenario, Individual Rights Will Be Willingly Relinquished For The Guarantee Of Their Well-being Granted To Them By A World Government, A New World Order.

The Position Is That Stability And Peace In Asia Depend On A Cooperative Relationship Between China And The United States.

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China Is A One Party State. Sooner Or Later China Will Get To The Point When The New Social Classes, Which Have Emerged Thanks To Economic Success, Will Have To Be Integrated Into The Political System. There Is No Guarantee That This Process Will Run Smoothly.

Guarantees That

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

A Leader Does Not Deserve The Name Unless He Is Willing Occasionally To Stand Alone.

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History Is The Memory Of States.

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

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

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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What Political Leaders Decide, Intelligence Services Tend To Seek To Justify.

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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.

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I Believe In Freedom Of Expression, And I Believe That Societies Thrive When They Permit Freedom Of Expression.

At Any Rate, Mutually Assured Destruction Was Never Our Policy.

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.

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.

For The Soul Of France Is Masterful History, Brilliantly Researched, And Hard To Put Down.

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.

Whatever Must Happen Ultimately Should Happen Immediately.

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

The Emigration Of Jews From The Soviet Union Is Not An Objective Of American Foreign Policy. And If They Put Jews Into Gas Chambers In The Soviet Union, It Is Not An American Concern. Maybe A Humanitarian Concern.

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.

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.

You Can't Make War In The Middle East Without Egypt And You Can't Make Peace Without Syria.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

There Are Only Two Reasons To Sit In The Back Row Of An Airplane: Either You Have Diarrhea, Or You're Anxious To Meet People Who Do.

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

[nixon] Wants A Massive Bombing Campaign In Cambodia. He Doesn't Want To Hear Anything About It. It's An Order, To Be Done. Anything That Flies On Anything That Moves.

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

Today, America Would Be Outraged If U.n. Troops Entered Los Angeles To Restore Order. Tomorrow They Will Be Grateful! This Is Especially True If They Were Told That There Were An Outside Threat From Beyond, Whether Real Or Promulgated, That Threatened Our Very Existence. It Is Then That All Peoples Of The World Will Plead To Deliver Them From This Evil. The One Thing Every Man Fears Is The Unknown. When Presented With This Scenario, Individual Rights Will Be Willingly Relinquished For The Guarantee Of Their Well-being Granted To Them By The World Government

The Illegal We Do Immediately. The Unconstitutional Takes A Little Longer.

The Russian People, At Least The Ones I Know, Have Pride In Being A Russian. And, Therefore, They Want To Be Taken Seriously In International Affairs.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

If We Do What Is Necessary, All The Odds Are In Our Favor.

In The Middle '50s, I Had Written That The Point Would Come, Inevitably, At Which The Relationship Between The Cause Of Conflict And Political Objectives Would Be Lost.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

With Proper Tactics, Nuclear War Need Not Be As Destructive As It Appears.

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.

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

In Asia, The Nation State Still Is Extremely Vital, And Of Course, Then In Africa, A Whole New Pattern Is Emerging Because The States In Africa Reflected The Preferences Of The Colonial Powers When They Were Established.

Every Civilization That Has Ever Existed Has Ultimately Collapsed.

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.

One Has To Remember That Every Progress That Has Been Made Towards Peace In The Middle East Has Come Under American Leadership.

The Chinese Military Budget Today Is Officially Listed As, I Think, About $15 Billion. But Even If You Double It, That's Only A Tenth Of Ours. So The Possibility Of China Challenging The United States For The Next Ten Years Over The Pacific Is Next To Zero. There Could Be A Conflict Between Us And China Over Taiwan, But I Think That, Too, Will Not Occur With The Proper Policies On Both Sides.

We Are Not Just Any Nation.

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

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

I Also Do Not Believe That The United States Can Let Itself Be Driven Into A Political Role By Escalating Terrorism, And Therefore, The Leaders Of The Arab World And Arafat Should Do Their Utmost To Put An End To This And Then The United States Should Do Its Utmost To Produce A Political Solution.

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

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.

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

Far Too Often The Ukrainian Issue Is Posed As A Showdown: Whether Ukraine Joins The East Or The West. But If Ukraine Is To Survive And Thrive, It Must Not Be Either Side's Outpost Against The Other - It Should Function As A Bridge Between Them.

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

Diplomacy: The Art Of Restraining Power.

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.

The Reason Prophets Are So Rarely Honored In Their Own Country Is That Their Role Is To Transcend The Limits Of Their Contemporaries' Experience And Imagination. They Achieve Recognition Only When Their Vision Has Been Turned Into Experience - In Short, When It Is Too Late To Benefit From Their Foresight.

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.

Our Concern For Human Rights Comes To The Fore When There Are Gross Violations Of Human Decencies. Then Other Countries, Including China, Must Recognize That This Affects The American Attitude Towards Their Country. But Towards What Precise Institutions Will It Evolve? I Think We Ought To Leave Something To History.

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

Covert Action Should Not Be Confused With Missionary Work.

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.

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?

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.

One Theory Is That We Will Make War Look So Attractive That We Undermine The Deterrent. That's Never Never Land. What We Have Now Would Have Been Enough To Deter Hitler. But We Are Talking In A Different Order Of Reality.

In 10 Years, There Will Be No More Israel.

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.

The Capacity To Admire Others Is Not My Most Fully Developed Trait.

The Security Of Israel Is A Moral Imperative For All Free Peoples.

I Don't Think We Should Pay People To Fight Terrorism. I Would Be Amazed If They Asked For Anything In Return.

A Bluff Taken Seriously Is More Useful Than A Serious Threat Interpreted As A Bluff.

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.

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 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.

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

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

I Would Have Said, Before The World Trade Center Events, That He Would Try To Get A Normal Relationship With China - Making Clear To China What The Limits Are Of What America Can Accept, But Also Showing Understanding For Some Of Chinese Necessities. I Thought He Was Moving Towards The Position That I Have More Or Less Advocated.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Behind The Slogans Lay An Intellectual Vacuum.

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.

A Nation Riven By Factions, In Which The Minority Has No Hope Of Ever Becoming A Majority, Or In Which Some Group Knows It Is Perpetually Outcast, Will Seem Oppressive To Its Members, Whatever The Legal Pretensions.

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

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.

I Would Say The Special Experience Of American Wartime Policy In The Last 40 Years, From Vietnam On, Is That The War Itself Became Controversial In The Country And That The Most Important Thing We Need In The Current Situation Is, Whatever Disagreements There May Be On Tactics, That The Legitimacy Of The War Itself Does Not Become A Subject Of Controversy. We Have To Start With The Assumption, Obviously, That Whatever Administration Is Conducting A War Wants To End It.

Deng Xiaoping Thought Of Himself As A Great Revolutionary And A Great Reformer. He Had Dismantled The Chinese Communist Management Of The Economy. In My Next-to-last Conversation With Him, Which Was About Six Months Before Tiananmen Square, He Said To Me That His Aim Would Be The Next Phase To Reduce The Communist Party To Philosophical Issues. And I Said, "what's A Philosophical Issue?" And He Said, "well, Like If We Make An Alliance With Russia." Given His View Of Russia, That Was Not The Likeliest Thing That Would Ever Happen.

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

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.

Nothing Is More Urgent Than A Serious, Dare I Say Compassionate, Debate As To Where We Are Going At Home And Abroad. Technicians Cannot Master Revolutions; Every Great Achievement Was An Idea Before It Became A Reality. Cathedrals Cannot Be Built By Those Who Are Paralyzed By Doubt Or Consumed By Cynicism. If A Society Loses The Capacity For Great Conception, It Can Be Administered But Not Governed.

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.

The Elderly Are Useless Eaters.

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

The Us Must Carry Out Some Act Somewhere In The World Which Shows Its Determination To Continue To Be A World Power.

Conspiracy Theory

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

The Longer I Am Out Of Office, The More Infallible I Appear To Myself.

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.

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.

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