Henry A. Kissinger Quotes

America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests

The predominant yardstick of your government is not human rights but national interests.

No nation has friends only interests.

There is no such thing as gratitude in international politics.

Foreign policy is an explicitly amoral enterprise.

President Obama, like every other leader on Earth, is still going to be looking out for national and economic interests. States don't cease to be states overnight just because they get a great visionary as their new president.

A great country worthy of the name does not have any friends.

I don't believe in ideology in international relations.

The pursuit of one's own interest seems to be the rule for international relations, without the common good of humanity being taken into consideration.

A state worthy of the name has no friends—only interests. [This is a generalized expression of British Prime Minister John Henry Temple's statement a century earlier.

The origins of the principle of the balance of power are lost in the mists of history.

[Describing Russia:] ... the most realistic regime in the world—no ideals.

...In practice it is found that International Law is always on the side of strong battalions...It is puerile...to apply to the dealings of a nation with its neighbor's territory the morality which would be applicable to two individuals possessing adjoining property, and protected from mutual wrong by a law superior to both.

Let me let you in on a little secret. There is no such thing as an international community. There are self-maximizing, self-interested states that will push their interests as far as possible.

There is always an element of realpolitik that has to be present in the conduct of any nation's national security affairs. At the same time, we have to also have a balance between realpolitik and Wilsonian principles of freedom and democracy and human rights. And maintaining that balance is the greatest challenge that we in the West, including the Federal Republic of Germany, have to face because it's many times a very difficult decision-making process.

I have always thought that foreign-policy idealism has to be tempered with realism.

The statesmen still say that we should not interfere in the internal affairs of other nations and yet it is not possible any longer not to interfere, even when we do not mean to do so.

Idealism that makes no distinction between areas where our national interest lies and those from which it is remote does no good for America. The weariness of the post-Versailles, post-Korea, post-Vietnam eras is never far from the national mood.

Everybody pursues their national interests. The only one who gets blamed for it is the United States.

Foreign policy is really domestic policy with its hat on.

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.

President Obama's consistent agenda has been to weaken the United States and our allies in pursuit of a more 'balanced' global power structure.

… realpolitik

I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.

There will no longer be need for spheres of influence, for alliances, balances of power ...