Henry A. Kissinger Quotes

The time has come to recognize that the U.S. will continue to exercise unprecedented power in a world where international rules are still unreliable and where security and advancing of the free democratic order still depend significantly on the possession and use of military might.

What really matters for great powers is power—national economic and military strength—and that speaks loudly and clearly for itself.

Small countries such as Belgium would be well-advised to rally to the side of the strong if the wish to retain their independence.

Though the object of being a Great Power is to be able to fight a Great War, the only way of remaining a Great Power is not to fight one.

The moment it became in the interests of one or the other of the Great Powers to alter the status quo, none of these treaty structures ever stood in the way of such alteration.

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.

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

Foreign policy is an explicitly amoral enterprise.

The U.S. must differentiate between controversial assertions of power, like those in the South China Sea, and fair reflections of China's growing contribution to the world, such as the new banks.

No nation has friends only interests.

All treaties between great states cease to be binding when they come in conflict with the struggle for existence.

I don't believe in ideology in international relations.

If I were remaking the United Nations there would only be one permanent representative—the United States because that’s the real reflection of the distribution of power in the world.

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.

As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable.

Europe is perhaps the first example in history of a non-dominant world power.

Unilateralism will lead to the decline of American Power.

Foreign policy is not philanthropy.

Have not the small Powers reason to fear that they will be victims in a subsequent conflict into which they will be dragged against their will in spite of their policy of indisputable independence and of their firm desire for neutrality? Are they not liable to become the subject of arrangements reached without their having been consulted?

The centuries old Westphalian state system has never resolved the tension between the principle of the sovereign equality of states and the idea that great powers enjoy certain privileges and bear special responsibilities.

Power is the true reserve currency in international affairs.

Under the George W. Bush Administration…, the United States was generally seen as having the capacity and resolve, to pursue its own agenda in complete disregard of other states’ preferences.

...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.

The U. S. is not the Boss, not the Boss any longer.

A new multipolar world has brought more uncertainty into international affairs.