Henry A. Kissinger Quotes

"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."

"There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full."

"It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise."

"The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been."

"No one will ever win the battle of the sexes; there's too much fraternizing with the enemy."

"The nice thing about being a celebrity is that, if you bore people, they think it's their fault."

"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."

"In crises the most daring course is often safest."

"The statesman's duty is to bridge the gap between his nation's experience and his vision."

"Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately."

"To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it."

"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."

"Next week there can't be any crisis. My schedule is already full."

"A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone."

"High office teaches decision making, not substance. It consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it. Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered; they learn how to make decisions but not what decisions to make."

"Leaders are responsible not for running public opinion polls but for the consequences of their actions."

"While we should never give up our principles, we must also realize that we cannot maintain our principles unless we survive."

"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."

"To argue that a collapse of the US in Iraq would not have consequences is simply living in a dream world,"

"Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem."