Henry A. Kissinger Quotes

Negotiating in the classic diplomatic sense assumes parties more anxious to agree than to disagree.

I'm optimistic because I'm pragmatic: Neither of the two sides, the military government nor the Islamic front, is capable of winning. If they continue to fight, they will both bleed to death.

By the way, if you do your job on behalf of your country, you have meetings where you put your position forward strongly, and the other side does the same thing. And I've had plenty of meetings in my career that really were heated, people yelling at each other.

Every diplomatic breakthrough is preceded by a crisis, but not every crisis leads to a breakthrough.

What Your Excellency is saying is logical, but I haven’t been sent here to be logical. I have come here to tell you about the rupture of relations.

The art of diplomacy is to take your humiliations in private.

A mercurial plan of action may have worked in the Trump Organization board room, but it's a disastrous tactic in foreign affairs.

I would have promised those terrorists a trip to Disneyland if it would have gotten the hostages released. I thank God they were satisfied with the missiles and we didn't have to go to that extreme.

I love to negotiate things, I do it really well, and all that stuff. But it's possible I won't be able to get along with Putin.

Diplomacy is the art of telling plain truths without giving offense.

Here is an example: while resolving current issues, our American colleagues made a proposal on the Syrian settlement but then suddenly declared at the UN that they were not going to discuss anything with us. It is necessary to understand what people want in one department versus another department of the United States. Do they have a common position? And this happened many times on very many areas of our cooperation.

Create the impression of endless willingness to compromise and you almost invite deadlines. That's the challenge we now have in North Korea and have had in North Korea for 10 years. In this sense, diplomacy and foreign policy and other elements of political activity have to be closely linked and have to be understood by the negotiators

Diplomats do not know how to negotiate, they only know how to keep their job.

We are desperately in need of the kind of smart diplomacy that has worked for America in the past. If you use force, it should be a last resort. And it needs to be used with full understanding of the consequences.

Only professional diplomats, inveterate idiots and women view diplomacy as a long-term substitute for war.

Oh, diplomacy ... it mops up war's spillages; legitimizes its outcomes; gives the strong state the means to impose its will on a weaker one, while saving its fleets and battalions for weightier opponents.

Diplomacy can be a frustrating thing. I think the strategy can work, so long as the force is robust and the rules of engagement are clear.

Having a missile test is not the way for North Korea to sit down with the president Donald Trump, because he's absolutely not going to do it. And I can tell you, Kim Jong-un can sit there and say all the conditions he wants, until he meets our conditions, we're not sitting down with him.

When a nation issues ultimatums, it leaves no room for compromise and ensures that war will continue.

I ought to have seized the initiative in 1938 instead of allowing myself to be forced into war in 1939; for war was, in any case, unavoidable. However, you can hardly blame me if the British and the French accepted at Munich every demand I made of them! (14th February 1945)

[O]rganized violence punctuated by committee meetings.

Diplomacy is the velvet glove that cloaks the fist of power.

A really good diplomat does not go in for victories, even when he wins them.

History offers examples of winning in diplomacy after losing in war.

In several speeches and interviews, Donald Trump has brought up his book 'The Art of the Deal,' and said that Obama would have negotiated a better deal with Iran if he had read it. It got even more awkward for Obama when Iran was like, 'It worked for us - you guys got screwed!'