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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.

-Henry A. Kissinger

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Well, He Keeps Saying

Henry A. Kissinger

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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.

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More From Henry A. Kissinger

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

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.

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

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.

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

Let Us Fashion Together A New World Order.

World Government

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

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

The Elderly Are Useless Eaters.

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

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.

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

For Other Nations, Utopia Is A Blessed Past Never To Be Recovered; For Americans It Is Just Beyond The Horizon.

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

Important Things

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.

In 10 Years, There Will Be No More Israel.

If You Control The Food, You Control A Nation. If You Control The Energy, You Control A Region. If You Control The Money, You Control The World.

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.

The Attitude Of The West And Of Russia Towards A Crisis Like Ukraine Is Diametrically Different. The West Is Trying To Establish The Legality Of Any Established Border. For Russia, Ukraine Is Part Of The Russian Patrimony. A Russian State Was Created Around Kiev About 1,200 Years Ago. Ukraine Itself Has Been Part Of Russia For 500 Years, And I Would Say Most Russians Consider It Part Of Russian Patrimony. The Ideal Solution Would Be To Have A Ukraine Like Finland Or Austria That Can Be A Bridge Between These Two Rather Than An Outpost.

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

In Crises The Most Daring Course Is Often Safest.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

China Is A Country With A Record Of Continuous Self-government Going Back 4,000 Years, The Only Society That Has Achieved This. One Must Start With The Assumption That They Must Have Learnt Something About The Requirements For Survival, And It Is Not Always To Be Assumed That We Know It Better Than They Do.

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

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.

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.

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.

It Is Not Often That Nations Learn From The Past Even Rarer That They Draw The Correct Conclusions From It. For The Lessons Of Historical Experience, As Of Personal Experience, Are Contingent. They Teach The Consequences Of Certain Actions, But They Cannot Force A Recognition Of Comparable Situations.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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 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.

Left To Its Own Devices, The State Department Machinery Tends Toward Inertia Rather Than Creativity; It Is Always On The Verge Of Turning Itself Into An Enormous Cable Machine.

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

Clearly Security Without Values Is Like A Ship Without A Rudder. But Values Without Security Are Like A Rudder Without A Ship.

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.

We Cannot Always Assure The Future Of Our Friends; We Have A Better Chance Of Assuring Our Future If We Remember Who Our Friends Are.

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

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

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

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.

It Is, After All, The Responsibility Of The Expert To Operate The Familiar And That Of The Leader To Transcend It.

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

Covert Action Should Not Be Confused With Missionary Work.

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

Every American President, Regardless Of Party, Has Said That America Has An Intense Interest In A Peaceful Resolution. And I Think It Should Be Left At That.

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.

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.

We Believe That Peace Is At Hand.

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.

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

[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.

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

In The Current [carter] Administration, Who Can Use The White House Swimming Pool And Tennis Courts Is Decided At The Very Highest Level. President Ford Did Not Bother Himself With Such Minor Details. He Let Me Swim In The Pool. He Only Got Upset When I Tried To Walk Across The Water.

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.

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

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.

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.

Over Time Even Two Armed Blind Men In A Room Can Do Enormous Damage To Each Other, Not To Speak Of The Room.

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.

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.

Behind The Slogans Lay An Intellectual Vacuum.

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

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

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 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.

This Is Awful. Do It Again.

I Don't Read Books, I Write Them.

The American Foreign Policy Trauma Of The Sixties And Seventies Was Caused By Applying Valid Principles To Unsuitable Conditions.

If Tehran Insists On Combining The Persian Imperial Tradition With Contemporary Islamic Fervor, Then A Collision With America And, Indeed, With Its Negotiating Partners Of The Six Is Unavoidable. Iran Simply Cannot Be Permitted To Fulfill A Dream Of Imperial Rule In A Region Of Such Importance To The Rest Of The World.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Now When I Bore People At A Party They Think It's Their Fault.

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

The First Reactions Are Often Instinctive. So One Of The First Things We Said Was That The Chinese Had No Right To Inspect The Plane, And That We Had A Sovereign Right To. I Don't Know What The Legal Position Is, But It Was Surely Psychologically Absolutely The Unwise Thing To Do.

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

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

The Absence Of Alternatives Clears The Mind Marvelously.

The American Formal Position Has Been That We Oppose Violence By Governments Against Their People. That Principle Should Not Be Abandoned.

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

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

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.

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

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.

He [deng Xiaoping] Said That He Did Not Understand Why We Failed To Grasp That The Alternative Was Not Democracy, But Total Chaos And Risking All The Reforms That Had Been Achieved.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

History Is The Memory Of States.

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

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

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

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

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.

Realism In Foreign Policy Is Made Up Of A Clear Set Of Values, Since Difficult Foreign Policy Decisions Are Often Decided With The Narrowest Of Majorities. Without Any Sense Of What Is Right And Wrong, One Would Drown In A Flood Of Difficult And Pragmatic Decisions.

I Have Learned, As I Wrote, That History Must Be Discovered, Not Declared. It's An Admission That One Grows In Life.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

We Are Not Just Any Nation.

People Are Generally Amazed That I Would Take An Interest In Any Form That Would Require Me To Stop Talking For Three Hours.

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

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.

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.

Depopulation Should Be The Highest Priority Of Foreign Policy Towards The Third World, Because The Us Economy Will Require Large And Increasing Amounts Of Minerals From Abroad, Especially From Less Developed Countries

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.

How To Achieve The New World Order

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.

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

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

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.

I Want To Thank You For Stopping The Applause. It Is Impossible For Me To Look Humble For Any Period Of Time.

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.

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.

An Iranian Moderate Is One Who Has Run Out Of Ammunition.

Donald Rumsfeld Is The Most Ruthless Man I Have Ever Met? And I Mean That As A Compliment.

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.

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.

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

Intellectual Capital

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

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

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

Even A Paranoid Can Have Enemies.

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

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.

When I First Saw China, There Were No Automobiles. There Were No Supermarkets. There Were No High-rise Buildings. There Were No Consumer Goods. There Were No Restaurants That Were At Least Accessible That Foreigners Could See. It Was A Stalinist Society, And A Very Poor Stalinist Society. So The Economic System Has Totally Changed, And The Private Sector In The Economic System Is Now The Dominant Sector. It Didn't Exist At All As Late As 1979.

The Members Of The Islamic Staye Have Cut The Throat Of An American On Television. This Is An Insult To The United States, Which Requires That We Demonstrate That This Is Not An Act That Is Free. I Would Strongly Favor A Strong Attack On Isis For A Period That Is Related To The Murder Of The American.

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.

Whatever Must Happen Ultimately Should Happen Immediately.

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.

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

I Believe That There Is A Whole Set Of Issues In The World - Environment, Proliferation, Energy, Cyberspace - That Can Only Be Dealt With On A Global Basis. The Traditional Patterns Of National Rivalry And National Competition Are Not Suitable For Those Cases.

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

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.

The True Conservative Is Not At Home In Social Struggle. He Will Attempt To Avoid Unbridgeable Schism, Because He Knows That A Stable Social Structure Thrives Not On Triumphs But On Reconciliations.

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

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.

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

We Are All The President's Men.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

The Test Of Policy Is How It Ends, Not How It Begins. Foreign Policy Is The Art Of Establishing Priorities. Demonization Is Not A Policy; It Is An Alibi For The Absence Of One. The Test Is Not Absolute Satisfaction But Balanced Dissatisfaction.

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.

The Defining Issue Is That The Government In Taiwan Was Considered To Be The Government Of All Of China, And The Authorities In Beijing Were Not Recognized As A Government Of China. So Taiwan Was The Residuary For All Of China.

What We In America Call Terrorists Are Really Groups Of People That Reject The International System

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.

Power Is The Great Aphrodisiac.

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

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.

History Knows No Resting Places And No Plateaus

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

This Country Cannot Afford To Tear Itself Apart On A Partisan Basis On Issues So Vital To Our National Security.

John Paul Ii Was One Of The Greatest Men Of The Last Century. Perhaps The Greatest.

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

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.

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.

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