Henry A. Kissinger Quotes

We need to deter Putin from further actions because this is a very real threat.

Our capacity to retaliate must be, and is, massive in order to deter all forms of aggression.

There is no direct evidence that nuclear weapons prevented a world war. Conversely, it is known that they nearly caused one.

The best war is the one that doesn’t have to be fought, and the best military is the one capable and versatile enough to deter the next war in the first place.

When you talk about peace through strength, what you're talking about is the concept of deterrence.

Airpower has become predominant, both as a deterrent to war, and-in the eventuality of war-as the devastating force to destroy an enemy's potential and fatally undermine his will to wage war.

If one little old general in shirt sleeves can take Saigon, think about 200 million Chinese comin' down those trails. No sir, I don't want to fight them.

If that's the only thing that's stopping war then thank God for the bomb.

We were lavish of blood in those days, and it was thought to be a grand thing to charge a battery or an earth-work lined with infantry.

One should never permit a disorder to persist in order to avoid a war, for wars cannot be avoided and can only be deferred to the advantage of others.

In this way, it seems to me that, since 1984, my book on the logistics of perception has been proved totally correct. For instance, almost every conflict since then has involved the logistics of perception, including the war in Lebanon, where Israel made use of cheap drones in order to track Yasser Arafat with the aim of killing him.

I have spent my life in the study of military strength as a deterrent to war, and in the character of military armaments necessary to win a war. The study of the first of these questions is still profitable, but we are rapidly getting to the point that no war can be won.

[Nixon] wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. He doesn't want to hear anything about it. It's an order, to be done. Anything that flies on anything that moves.

When people know we are ready to use nuclear weapons, they're going to back off if we do something aggressive. So basically, nuclear weapons are always being used.

Far from making peace, wars invariably serve as classrooms and laboratories where men and techniques and states of mind are prepared for the next war.

When war is waged, it is for the purpose of safeguarding or increasing one's capacity to make war. International politics are wholly involved in this vicious cycle. What is called national prestige consists in behaving always in such a way as to demoralize other nations by giving them the impression that, if it comes to war, one would certainly defeat them. What is called national security is an imaginary state of affairs in which one would retain the capacity to make war while depriving all other countries of it.

Mutually Assured Destruction, MAD, works only as long as it works; it does not know what to do if deterrence fails, for it envisions no defensive capabilities. A deterrent works until it is needed; then one needs defenses.

We are going to scourge the Third Reich from end to end. We are bombing Germany city by city and ever more terribly in order to make it impossible for her to go in with the war. That is our object, and we shall pursue it relentlessly.

The most expensive deterrent pales in comparison to the least expensive conflict. Deterrence is hard, but war is hell.

We cannot change the hearts of the people of the South, but we can make war so terrible that they will realize the fact that however brave and gallant and devoted to their country still they are mortal and should exhaust all peaceful remedies before they fly to war.

To know in war how to recognize an opportunity and seize it is better than anything else.

It is the business of a general to be quiet and thus ensure secrecy; upright and just, and thus maintain order.

We will build our defenses beyond challenge, lest weakness invite challenge. We will confront weapons of mass destruction, so that a new century is spared new horrors.

War means fighting. The business of the soldier is to fight. Armies are not called out to dig trenches, to throw up breastworks, to live in camps, but to find the enemy and strike him; to invade his country, and do him all possible damage in the shortest possible time. This will involve great destruction of life and property while it lasts; but such a war will of necessity be of brief continuance, and so would be an economy of life and property in the end.