Henry A. Kissinger Country Quotations

In the 1960s, I would have considered China with its CPC an ideologically more dynamic country than the Soviet Union. But the Soviet Union was strategically more threatening.

I am against portraying China as the demon of the global community. China has grasped more quickly than other countries what globalization means and what it demands. The country has learned how to use other people's innovations for itself. India, incidentally, is not far behind China in this respect. Both are not nations in the European sense, but rather cultural communities with enormous markets. The challenge of the future is to work out how to deal with that.

I don't think that that's a desirable option for us. Besides, it wouldn't work, because there are too many other countries that are willing to work economically with China. But I don't think the basic relationship depends on economics. It depends on a political understanding of what is required for peace in Asia.

Like any developing country, it has an inequality of wealth. In the Chinese case, it is particularly [pronounced] by the fact that they decided they couldn't make the whole country move forward simultaneously, so they've started region by region. So the interior regions are much less well off than the coastal regions. And this is certainly a huge challenge, because it produces a flow of populations from the poorer regions to the richer regions.

My country's history, Mr. President, tells us that it is possible to fashion unity while cherishing diversity, that common action is possible despite the variety of races, interests, and beliefs we see here in this chamber. Progress and peace and justice are attainable. So we say to all peoples and governments: Let us fashion together a new world order.

China is a country with a record of continuous self-government going back 4,000 years, the only society that has achieved this. One must start with the assumption that they must have learnt something about the requirements for survival, and it is not always to be assumed that we know it better than they do.

I would say the special experience of American wartime policy in the last 40 years, from Vietnam on, is that the war itself became controversial in the country and that the most important thing we need in the current situation is, whatever disagreements there may be on tactics, that the legitimacy of the war itself does not become a subject of controversy. We have to start with the assumption, obviously, that whatever administration is conducting a war wants to end it.

China had never had to deal in a world of countries of approximately equal strength, and so to adjust to such a world, is in itself a profound challenge to China, which now has fourteen countries on its borders, some of which are small, but can project their nationality into China, some of which are large, and historically significant, so that any attempt by Chinese to dominate the world, would involve in a disastrous for the peace of the world.

A country that demands moral perfection in its foreign policy will achieve neither perfection nor security

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

This country cannot afford to tear itself apart on a partisan basis on issues so vital to our national security.

Countries do not assume burdens because it is fair, only because it is necessary.

The reason prophets are so rarely honored in their own country is that their role is to transcend the limits of their contemporaries' experience and imagination. They achieve recognition only when their vision has been turned into experience - in short, when it is too late to benefit from their foresight.

Almost every peace process that has gone on between the Arab side and Israel, the United States has been somewhat isolated because most of the countries in the world, what they really want is to accept the Arab peace plan or so-called peace plan, which in its present form would lead to the destruction of Israel.

The Russian empire under czars and commissars has been hard to deal with for other countries.

We attempted to try to solve every problem in the world, out of a sense of moral obligations, and attitudes, and our history. But no country can solve every problem without exhausting itself. Therefore, we have to establish priorities.

If you mean by "military victory" an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible.

My heart goes out to the president because I've served in an administration that faced a very divided country in a very difficult set of circumstances.

It is hard to believe that Kay is no longer among us. But in a way, she will never leave us. Her place in this country will not be filled, nor the void her death leaves on the lives of her friends,

The Western concept of democracy is based on the idea that the loser of an election has the possibility next time round of being the winner. But in the case of an ethnically or religiously divided country, in which minorities don't live peacefully together, this necessary balance can't be properly guaranteed by democracy. When each ethnic group arms itself, it is not surprising that the army of a new state is viewed by part of the population as an ideological militia.

Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the third world, because the US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries

Our concern for human rights comes to the fore when there are gross violations of human decencies. Then other countries, including China, must recognize that this affects the American attitude towards their country. But towards what precise institutions will it evolve? I think we ought to leave something to history.

If you control the oil you control the country; if you control food, you control the population.

I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.

In the period after the Second World War, there were still leaders in Europe who represented weak countries, but possessed a sense of global foreign policy. Nowadays, on the other hand, there are politicians who represent pretty powerful countries, but whose citizens are not prepared to sacrifice themselves for the state.

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

In relations with many domestically weak countries, a radio transmitter can be a more effective form of pressure than a squadron B-52s.