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

— Henry Kissinger

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

— Henry Kissinger

Leadership is absolutely vital if there are comparable countries which can affect the security of the world you live in. Between Lincoln and Roosevelt's time, America was protected by huge oceans and, in practice, by the British navy. Today, it's different, and the obsession of the Obama administration has been for retrenchment.

— Henry Kissinger

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

— Henry Kissinger

Moderation is a virtue only in those who are thought to have an alternative.

— Henry Kissinger

Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.

— Henry Kissinger

Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There is too much fraternizing with the enemy.

— Henry Kissinger

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

— Henry Kissinger

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.

— Henry Kissinger

Now when I bore people at a party they think it's their fault.

— Henry Kissinger