The Vietnam War required us to emphasize the national interest rather than abstract principles. What President Nixon and I tried to do was unnatural. And that is why we didn't make it.

- Henry A. Kissinger

People are generally amazed that I would take an interest in any forum that would require me to stop talking for three hours.

- Henry A. Kissinger

No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time.

- Henry A. Kissinger

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

- Henry A. Kissinger

If you don't know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere.

- Henry A. Kissinger

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.

- Henry A. Kissinger

Most foreign policies that history has marked highly, in whatever country, have been originated by leaders who were opposed by experts.

- Henry A. Kissinger

Even a paranoid can have enemies.

- Henry A. Kissinger

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

- Henry A. Kissinger

It is, after all, the responsibility of the expert to operate the familiar and that of the leader to transcend it.

- Henry A. Kissinger

The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.

- Henry A. Kissinger

The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself.

- Henry A. Kissinger

We are all the President's men.

- Henry A. Kissinger

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

- Henry A. Kissinger

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.

- Henry A. Kissinger

Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision.

- Henry A. Kissinger

In crises the most daring course is often safest.

- Henry A. Kissinger

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.

- Henry A. Kissinger

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.

- Henry A. Kissinger

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

- Henry A. Kissinger