A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone.
Henry A. Kissinger

A leader who confines his role to his people's experience dooms himself to stagnation; a leader who outstrips his people's experience runs the risk of not being understood.
Henry A. Kissinger

Accept everything about yourself - I mean everything, You are you and that is the beginning and the end - no apologies, no regrets.
Henry A. Kissinger

Any fact that needs to be disclosed should be put out now or as quickly as possible, because otherwise the bleeding will not end.
Henry A. Kissinger

Art is man's expression of his joy in labor.
Henry A. Kissinger

Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.
Henry A. Kissinger

Diplomacy: the art of restraining power.
Henry A. Kissinger

Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.
Henry A. Kissinger

Even a paranoid can have enemies.
Henry A. Kissinger

For other nations, utopia is a blessed past never to be recovered; for Americans it is just beyond the horizon.
Henry A. Kissinger


High office teaches decision making, not substance. It consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it. Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered; they learn how to make decisions but not what decisions to make.
Henry A. Kissinger

I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.
Henry A. Kissinger

I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.
Henry A. Kissinger

If eighty percent of your sales come from twenty percent of all of your items, just carry those twenty percent.
Henry A. Kissinger

If I should ever be captured, I want no negotiation - and if I should request a negotiation from captivity they should consider that a sign of duress.
Henry A. Kissinger

If it's going to come out eventually, better have it come out immediately.
Henry A. Kissinger

If you don't know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere.
Henry A. Kissinger

In crises the most daring course is often safest.
Henry A. Kissinger

It is, after all, the responsibility of the expert to operate the familiar and that of the leader to transcend it.
Henry A. Kissinger

It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise.
Henry A. Kissinger