Henry Kissinger

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

“In crises the most daring course is often safest.”

“There is obviously a gap between the public's perception of the role of U.S. foreign policy and the elite's perception.”

“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 American foreign policy trauma of the sixties and seventies was caused by applying valid principles to unsuitable conditions.”

“Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton both had exceptional natural abilities. Nelson Rockefeller was very good statewide but never gained national traction.”

“If it's going to come out eventually, better have it come out immediately.”

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

“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.”

“For other nations, utopia is a blessed past never to be recovered; for Americans it is just beyond the horizon.”

“Any fact that needs to be disclosed should be put out now or as quickly as possible, because otherwise the bleeding will not end.”

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

“Art is man's expression of his joy in labor.”

“Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.”

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

“The Trump phenomenon is in large part a reaction of Middle America to attacks on its values by intellectual and academic communities. There are other reasons, but this is a significant one.”

“The American temptation is to believe that foreign policy is a subdivision of psychiatry.”

“Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately.”

“My view of my role is that together with like-minded men and women, I could help contribute to a bipartisan view of American engagement in the world for another period; I could do my part to overcome this really, in a way, awful period in which we are turning history into personal recriminations, depriving our political system of a serious debate.”

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