Henry A. Kissinger Quotes

I don't believe Iran is a suicide state.

The U.S and England are not worthy of security council membership. Those who want good relations with the Iranian people should bow and surrender to its right and might.

Anti-Western resentment and Russian patriotism appear particularly pronounced in Putin’s personality and life experiences, but a different Russian government not run by former KGB types would still be confronted with the challenge of weakness vis-à-vis the West and the desire for a special role in the world. Russia’s foreign policy orientation, in other words, is as much a condition as a choice. But if Russian elites could somehow redefine their sense of exceptionalism and put aside their unwinnable competition with the West, they could set their country on a less costly, more promising course.

By linking these countries together in his 'axis of evil' speech, President Bush implied an identity between them not only in terms of their threat, but also in terms of the action necessary to deal with the threat. A lot of work will now need to be done to delink the three, and to show why military action against Iraq is so much more justified than against Iran and North Korea.

Great powers engage.

I could have been very popular if I had launched a military attack on Iran but I chose patience.

Foreign policy begins with domestic policy.

The overall or political objective is to impose upon Russia the will of the United States and British Empire.

Both China and Russia felt duped by the U.N. 'no-fly' zone resolution regarding Libya in 2011 that eventually led to the ouster of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi. China and Russia had abstained from the Libyan resolution, and neither country plans to make what they regard as a similar mistake again.

We do not want war with Iran.

I think the attempt to draw a comparison between Iran and Syria is false, misleading and dangerous.

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.

The United States prefers that Iraq meet its obligations voluntarily, yet we are prepared for the alternative.

We have treated our most serious adversaries, such as Iran and North Korea, in the most juvenile manner - by giving them the silent treatment. In so doing, we have weakened, not strengthened, our bargaining position and our leadership.

Nations are not thugs. They are bodies of intelligent people.

The international community unfortunately did take sides in Libya, and we would never allow the Security Council to authorise anything similar to what happened in Libya.

We need somebody ready to be commander-in-chief on day one, who understands there are no moderates in Iran; they've been killed a long time ago.

After spending the 1980s building up Saddam's Iraq as a counterweight to Iran, U.S. policy abruptly reversed course with his invasion of Kuwait and has since tried to cut him down to size. The policy is called 'containment,' but the question is, containment of what?

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

Hostility toward Iran may not be the silliest of all American foreign policies - that would probably be the continuing trade embargo of Cuba - but it is undoubtedly the most self-defeating.

I don't believe in ideology in international relations.

I just think everything we do has an unintended consequence. We take out Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and Iraq was the check against Iran.

Foreign policy is about choosing from nasty options.

Iran does not yield easily in the standard tools of Western political analysis.

No country can be expected to make peace with a nation that denies its right to exist.