About Henry Kissinger
Henry Kissinger, born on May 27, 1923, in Germany, was a prominent diplomat, political scientist, and strategist who played a major role in shaping U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War. Fleeing Nazi Germany in 1938, he later became a key advisor to U.S. presidents, serving as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. He was instrumental in major geopolitical decisions, including U.S.-China relations, arms control negotiations, and Middle East diplomacy.
407 Powerful Henry Kissinger Quotes to Inspire You
Here are 407 Powerful quotes by Henry Kissinger on various topics to inspire you.
4. “The tragedy of America is that it entered all the wars with a consensus in favor of them, but within a defined period, the legitimacy of the war became a major domestic issue, with some people arguing that withdrawal was the only legitimate objective.”
Henry Kissinger
America, War, Consensus, Politics, Legitimacy
6. “Moreover, events often move too quickly to allow for precise calculation; leaders have to make judgments based on intuitions and hypotheses that cannot be proven at the time of decision. Management of risk is as critical to the leader as analytical skill.”
Henry Kissinger Leadership, Decision-Making, Risk, Judgment, Strategy
7. “As nuclear weapons spread into more and more hands, the calculus of deterrence grows increasingly ephemeral and deterrence less and less reliable. In a widely proliferated world, it becomes ever more difficult to decide who is deterring whom and by what calculations.”
Henry Kissinger Nuclear, Weapons, Deterrence, Security, Strategy
8. “In recent decades, Europe has retreated to the conduct of soft power. But besieged as it is on almost all frontiers by upheavals and migration, Europe, including Britain, can avoid turning into a victim of circumstance only by assuming a more active role.”
Henry Kissinger Europe, Politics, Power, Strategy, Migration
10. “The nature of these challenges was not singular to the 1930s. In every era, humanity produces demonic individuals and seductive ideas of repression. The task of statesmanship is to prevent their rise to power and sustain an international order capable of deterring them if they do achieve it. The interwar years’ toxic mixture of facile pacifism, geopolitical imbalance, and allied disunity allowed these forces a free hand.”
Henry Kissinger History, Statesmanship, Power, Conflict, Repression
11. “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.”
Henry Kissinger Diplomacy, Leadership, Governance, Foreign Service, Decision-Making
12. “Created by humans, AI should be overseen by humans. But in our time, one of AI’s challenges is that the skills and resources required to create it are not inevitably paired with the philosophical perspective to understand its broader implications.”
Henry Kissinger AI, Ethics, Technology, Responsibility, Oversight
13. “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.”
Henry Kissinger Statesmanship, History, Society, Politics, Idealism
14. “If the gap between the qualities required for election and those essential for the conduct of office becomes too wide, the conceptual grasp and sense of history that should be part of foreign policy may be lost – or else the cultivation of these qualities may take so much of a president’s first term in office as to inhibit a leading role for the United States.”
Henry Kissinger Leadership, Elections, Politics, History, Governance
17. “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.”
Henry Kissinger Taiwan, China, Governance, Politics, Diplomacy
18. “For one thousand years, the peoples of Europe had taken for granted that whatever the fluctuations in the balance of power, its constituent elements resided in Europe. The world of the emerging Cold War sought its balances in the conduct and armament of two superpowers: the United States across the Atlantic and the Soviet Union at the geographic fringes of Europe.”
Henry Kissinger Europe, Cold War, Power, History, Superpowers
