Henry A. Kissinger Quotes

No nation has friends only interests.

I don't believe in ideology in international relations.

… realpolitik

For four hundred years the foreign policy of England has to oppose the strongest, most aggressive, most dominating Power on the Continent …

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

Tensions plagued his [Woodrow Wilson’s] presidency--particularly the one between principal and pragmatism in United States foreign policy. This is perpetual and the defies resolution.

We have no eternal allies, and we have not perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.

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.

Bush doesn't present himself as a realpolitik politician.

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.

President Nixon was a pragmatic strategist. He would engage, not contain, China, but he would also quietly set pieces into place for a fallback position should China not play according to the rules as a good global citizen.

Foreign policy is an explicitly amoral enterprise.

The White House isn't the place to learn how to deal with international crisis, the balance of power, war and peace, and the economic future of the next generation.

The reason for having diplomatic relations [with Communist China] is not to confer a compliment, but to secure a convenience.... British policy has always been that you recognize when ... Government truly has control. It's not a question of whether you like them or not.

I don't believe foreign policy is about altruism.

There is a widespread view among the liberal intelligentsia to the effect that Henry Kissinger, U.S. National Security Advisor from 1969 to 1975 and Secretary of State from 1973 to 1977, was a bad man. That may even be an understatement. In this fashionable consensus, he is not just a bad man: he is a war criminal.

A supreme pragmatist, Kissinger was never interested in the art of the impossible - and nor, as a biographer, am I. That is why, having initially been invited to write his entire official biography, I eventually decided to devote myself to writing just one year in his life: 1973.

Men are very apt to run into extremes, hatred to England may carry come into an excess of Confidence in France... I am heartily disposed to entertain the most favourable sentiments of our new ally and to cherish them in others to a reasonable degree; but it is a maxim founded on the universal experience of mankind, that no nation is to be trusted farther than it is bound by its interest; and no prudent statesman or politician will venture to depart from it.

One might have thought that the Cold War's conclusion would have convinced the Left that appeasement of dictators is not profitable.

It is a maxim, founded on the universal experience of mankind, that no nation is to be trusted farther than it is bound by its interest; and no prudent statesman or politician will venture to depart from it.

...foreign policy is a matter of costs and benefits, not theology.

Realism is important in foreign policy. You have to be realistic about what you can achieve, and about the pitfalls, and problems along the way, of which there are plenty. Nothing is easy. It's always rough.

I started, you know, to work as a diplomat during the Soviet days, and in spite of ideology being very high on the Communist Party agenda, I can assure you that in practical terms, we have always been trying to be pragmatic.

Wishful thinking won't make the Palestinians an Israeli peace partner, no matter how much President Barack Obama pressures Israel to make concessions; caustically mocking Putin's worldview won't make it any less real or mitigate the Russian threat.

America is exceptional in combining standard great-power realism with extravagant idealism about the country's redemptive role in creating international order.