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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.

-Henry A. Kissinger

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Well, I Don't Know

Henry A. Kissinger

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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.

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

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

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

Whatever Must Happen Ultimately Should Happen Immediately.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

A Little Uncertainty Is Good For Everyone.

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Intellectual Capital

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.

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

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.

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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.

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.

We Are All The President's Men.

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.

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

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.

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.

Who Controls The Food Supply Controls The People; Who Controls The Energy Can Control Whole Continents; Who Controls Money Can Control The World.

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

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

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

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

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I Don't Read Books, I Write Them.

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In 10 Years, There Will Be No More Israel.

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You Should Not Think That You Can Shape History Only By Your Will. This Is Also Why I'm Against The Concept Of Intervention When You Don't Know Its Ultimate Implications.

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

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

Intelligence Services

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

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We Are Not Just Any Nation.

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.

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

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.

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.

How To Achieve The New World Order

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

In The End, Peace Can Be Achieved Only By Hegemony Or By Balance Of Power.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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The China Of The 1970s Was A Communist Dictatorship. The China Of The Twenty-first Century Is A One-party State Without A Firm Ideological Foundation, More Similar To Mexico Under The Pri Than Russia Under Stalin. But The Measurement Of The Political And The Economic Evolution Has Not Yet Been Completed, And Is One Of The Weak Points Of The System.

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

Intellectuals Are Cynical And Cynics Have Never Built A Cathedral.

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

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.

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

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

We First Became Conscious Of The Plane Publicly On A Monday. I Thought Then By The Weekend It Would Be Done. But Then The Chinese Military, The Defense Minister Made A Statement Saying That If There Was No Apology From The United States, The Chinese Military And The Chinese People Would Never Understand. No Reference To The Government Or The Communist Party, And That Obviously Presented An Internal Problem To The Chinese Leadership, Which Was Travelling At That Moment.

The Elderly Are Useless Eaters.

There Is No Realism Without An Element Of Idealism.

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.

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.

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.

This Is Awful. Do It Again.

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

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.

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.

We Believe That Peace Is At Hand.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Does Anyone Have Any Questions For My Answers?

Even A Paranoid Can Have Enemies.

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

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The Greatest Need Of The Contemporary International System Is An Agreed Concept Of Order.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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 Idea Of Abstract Power Only Exists For Academics, Not In Real Life.

We Are Doomed To Coexist.

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.

In Crises The Most Daring Course Is Often Safest.

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

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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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.

World Population Needs To Be Decreased By 50%

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

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

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Guarantees That

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Important Things

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.

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.

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.

Diplomacy: The Art Of Restraining Power.

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

U.s. Policy Toward The Third World Should Be One Of Depopulation

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Creighton W. Abrams, Jr.

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