319 Quotes by Henry A. Kissinger

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.

History is the memory of States.

If peace is equated simply with the absence of war, it can become abject pacifism that turns the world over to the most ruthless.

The American formal position has been that we oppose violence by governments against their people. That principle should not be abandoned.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.