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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.

-Henry A. Kissinger

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What Is Applicable Is

Henry A. Kissinger

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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.

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

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

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.

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

I 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.

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.

Becoming Conscious Is Of Course A Sacrilege Against Nature; It Is As Though You Had Robbed The Unconscious Of Something. The Nice Thing About Being A Celebrity Is That If You Bore People They Think It's Their Fault.

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.

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

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.

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

Important Things

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

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

In 10 Years, There Will Be No More Israel.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

America Has No Permanent Friends Or Enemies, Only Interests.

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

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

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.

Behind The Slogans Lay An Intellectual Vacuum.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Every Civilization That Has Ever Existed Has Ultimately Collapsed.

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

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

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.

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

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

Tutelage Is A Comfortable Relationship For The Senior Partner, But It Is Demoralizing In The Long Run. It Breeds Illusions Of Omniscience On One Side And Attitudes Of Impotent Irresponsibility On The Other.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Power Is The Great Aphrodisiac.

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

[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.

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

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

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.

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

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 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.

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.

To Have Striven So Hard, To Have Molded A Public Personality Out Of So Amorphous An Identity, To Have Sustained That Superhuman Effort Only To End With Every Weakness Disclosed And Every Error Compounding The Downfall--that Was A Fate Of Biblical Proportions. Evidently The Deity Would Not Tolerate The Presumption That All Can Be Manipulated; An Object Lesson Of The Limits Of Human Presumption Was Necessary.

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

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.

History Knows No Resting Places And No Plateaus

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

The Elderly Are Useless Eaters.

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

Before The Freedom Of Information Act, I Used To Say At Meetings "the Illegal We Do Immediately. The Unconstitutional Takes A Little Longer." [...] But Since The Freedom Of Information Act, I'm Afraid To Say Things Like That.

We Are Not Just Any Nation.

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.

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

I Was Always Convinced That Decent People In The Case Of Vietnam, Highly Intelligent, Decent People, Got Us Involved Because They Had Made, In Part, A Misjudgment About The Nature Of The Communist System And The Unity Of The Communist World And The Degree To Which The Experience Of Europe Could Be Repeated In Vietnam.

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.

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.

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

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

A Little Uncertainty Is Good For Everyone.

We Are All The President's Men.

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

History Is The Memory Of States.

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

The Essence Of Richard Nixon Is Loneliness.

Transcendentalism

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

I 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.

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.

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

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

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.

Obama Is Like A Chess Player Who Is Playing Simultaneous Chess And Has Opened His Game With An Unusual Opening.

[the New World Order] Cannot Happen Without U.s. Participation, As We Are The Most Significant Single Component. Yes, There Will Be A New World Order, And It Will Force The United States To Change It's Perceptions.

World Government

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

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.

Diplomacy: The Art Of Restraining Power.

Let Us Fashion Together A New World Order.

World Government

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.

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

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.

This Is Awful. Do It Again.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

Conspiracy Theory

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Congratulations

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

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

More And More Of The Taiwanese Economy Is Connected With The Mainland. There Are More And More Exchanges Taking Place. There's No Reason To Doubt That Over A Period Of Ten Years Or So, Or Maybe More, The Conditions Of Life On The Two Sides Of The Taiwan Strait Will Become More Comparable, And The Dialogue On The Political Level Therefore Easier.

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

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

How To Achieve The New World Order

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

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

I Don't Stand On Protocol. Just Call Me Your Excellency.

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.

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

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

The Absence Of Alternatives Clears The Mind Marvelously.

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.

Even A Paranoid Can Have Enemies.

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

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.

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

Our Problem Was That In The American Approach To Soviet Affairs Policy Has Oscillated Between People Who Take An Essentially Psychological Approach And People Who Take An Essentially Theological Approach, And The Two Really Meet. The Psychologists Try To "understand" The Soviet Union. And Try To Ease Its Alleged Fears. The Theologians Say The Soviets Are Evil.

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

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.

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

Intellectual Capital

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

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

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