Henry Kissinger Quotes

"The Next Steps With Iran" in The Washington Post (31 July 2006), p. A15 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/30/AR2006073000546.html
2000s

As quoted in The Other 637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said (1984) by Robert Byrne
1980s
Variant: Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.

This remark was first attributed to Kissinger, among others, in the 1970s. The Quote Verifier (2006) attributes it to political scientist Paul Sayre, but notes earlier similar remarks by Woodrow Wilson. Clyde J. Wingfield referred to it as a familiar joke in The American University (1970)
Unattributed variants:
Somebody once said that one of the reasons academic infighting is so vicious is that the stakes are so small. There's so little at stake and they are so nasty about it.
The Craft of Crime : Conversations with Crime Writers (1983) by John C. Carr
The reason that academic politics is so vicious is that the stakes are so small.
Mentioned as an "old saw" in Teachers for Our Nation's Schools (1990) by John I. Goodlad
Misattributed

This is widely reported on many sites as coming from the Bilderberg Conference (1991) Evians, France, purportedly recorded by a Swiss diplomat, but no such recording has ever been provided.
Misattributed

Meeting of the "40 Committee" on covert action in Chile (27 June 1970) quoted in The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (1974); the quotation was censored prior to publication due to legal action by the government. See New York Times (11 September 1974) "Censored Matter in Book About C.I.A. Said to Have Related Chile Activities; Damage Feared" by Seymour Hersh
1970s

The End of the Road (1982), Ch. 25 "Years of Upheaval"
1980s

Transcript of telephone conversation with poet and anti-war activist Allen Ginsberg from the National Security Archive http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB263/19710423-1950-Ginsberg-FIX.pdf (23 April 1971)
1970s

Meeting of the "40 Committee" on covert action in Chile (27 June 1970) quoted in The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (1974); the quotation was censored prior to publication due to legal action by the government. See New York Times (11 September 1974) "Censored Matter in Book About C.I.A. Said to Have Related Chile Activities; Damage Feared" by Seymour Hersh

[Omi, M., Winant, H., Racial Formation in the United States, Taylor & Francis, 2014, 978-1-135-12751-0, https://books.google.com/books?id=T7LcAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA239, harv, 2018-11-02]
1970s

Commenting on the Iraq War in a BBC interview of 19 November 2006, as quoted in "Kissinger: Iraq military win impossible" by Tariq Panja, Associated Press, at Yahoo! News (20 November 2006) http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061120/ap_on_re_mi_ea/britain_iraq_kissinger
2000s

On bombing Cambodia during the Vietnam war. From an interview with the Atlantic magazine - "The Lessons of Henry Kissinger" https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/12/the-lessons-of-henry-kissinger/505868/ (10 November 2016)
2010s

Munk debates – “21st Century will belong to China” – Kissinger, Zakaria, Ferguson, Li http://www.livestream.com/munkdebates/video?clipId=pla_937b4cf4-e0ea-4ed5-a458-6a3ba43769b8
2000s

Henry Kissinger: The White House Years, quoted from Dinesh D'Souza: What's so great about America http://books.google.com/books?id=tFcDN5D1SLQC&pg=PA164&dq=kissinger+america+friends+only+interests&lr=&as_drrb_is=q&as_minm_is=0&as_miny_is=&as_maxm_is=0&as_maxy_is=&num=50&as_brr=0&ei=_UCDSs7YA6fuygTH3LTiCg&hl=sv#v=onepage&q=kissinger%20america%20friends%20only%20interests&f=false. This echoes Lord Palmerston's words: "We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual".
1980s

Speaking in Warsaw in 2012, Kissinger said that he didn't think the saying originated with him, "I am not sure I actually said it, but it's a good statement so why not take credit for it?"
Misattributed
Source: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/kissinger-says-calling-europe-quote-not-likely-his

The White House Years (1979)
1970s
Context: The superpowers often behave like two heavily armed blind men feeling their way around a room, each believing himself in mortal peril from the other, whom he assumes to have perfect vision. Each side should know that frequently uncertainty, compromise, and incoherence are the essence of policymaking. Yet each tends to ascribe to the other a consistency, foresight, and coherence that its own experience belies. Of course, over time, even two armed blind men can do enormous damage to each other, not to speak of the room.

As quoted in "Special Section: Chagrined Cowboy" in TIME magazine (8 October 1979) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,916877,00.html
1970s
Context: Ever since the secret trip to China, my own relationship with Nixon had grown complicated. Until then I had been an essentially anonymous White House assistant. But now his associates were unhappy, and not without reason, that some journalists were giving me perhaps excessive credit for the more appealing aspects of our foreign policy while blaming Nixon for the unpopular moves.
These tendencies were given impetus by an interview I granted to the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, without doubt the single most disastrous conversation I ever had with any member of the press. I saw her briefly on Nov. 2 and 4, 1972, in my office. I did so largely out of vanity. She had interviewed leading personalities all over the world. Fame was sufficiently novel for me to be flattered by the company I would be keeping. I had not bothered to read her writings; her evisceration of other victims was thus unknown to me.

"The Vietnam Negotiations", Foreign Affairs, Vol. 48, No. 2 (January 1969), p. 214; also quoted as "A conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerilla army wins if he does not lose."
1960s
Context: We fought a military war; our opponents fought a political one. We sought physical attrition; our opponents aimed for our psychological exhaustion. In the process we lost sight of one of the cardinal maxims of guerrilla war: the guerrilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does not win. The North Vietnamese used their armed forces the way a bull-fighter uses his cape — to keep us lunging in areas of marginal political importance.

Interview with Oriana Fallaci (November 1972), as quoted in "Oriana Fallaci and the Art of the Interview" in Vanity Fair (December 2006) http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/12/hitchens200612; Kissinger, as quoted in "Special Section: Chagrined Cowboy" in TIME magazine (8 October 1979) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,916877,00.html called this "without doubt the single most disastrous conversation I ever had with any member of the press" and claimed that he had probably been misquoted or quoted out of context, but Fallaci later produced the tapes of the interview.
1970s
Context: I've always acted alone. Americans like that immensely.
Americans like the cowboy who leads the wagon train by riding ahead alone on his horse, the cowboy who rides all alone into the town, the village, with his horse and nothing else. Maybe even without a pistol, since he doesn't shoot. He acts, that's all, by being in the right place at the right time. In short, a Western. … This amazing, romantic character suits me precisely because to be alone has always been part of my style or, if you like, my technique.

The White House Years (1979)
1970s
Context: The superpowers often behave like two heavily armed blind men feeling their way around a room, each believing himself in mortal peril from the other, whom he assumes to have perfect vision. Each side should know that frequently uncertainty, compromise, and incoherence are the essence of policymaking. Yet each tends to ascribe to the other a consistency, foresight, and coherence that its own experience belies. Of course, over time, even two armed blind men can do enormous damage to each other, not to speak of the room.

1970s
Context: Ever since the secret trip to China, my own relationship with Nixon had grown complicated. Until then I had been an essentially anonymous White House assistant. But now his associates were unhappy, and not without reason, that some journalists were giving me perhaps excessive credit for the more appealing aspects of our foreign policy while blaming Nixon for the unpopular moves.
These tendencies were given impetus by an interview I granted to the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, without doubt the single most disastrous conversation I ever had with any member of the press. I saw her briefly on Nov. 2 and 4, 1972, in my office. I did so largely out of vanity. She had interviewed leading personalities all over the world. Fame was sufficiently novel for me to be flattered by the company I would be keeping. I had not bothered to read her writings; her evisceration of other victims was thus unknown to me.

As quoted in "Special Section: Chagrined Cowboy" in TIME magazine (8 October 1979) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,916877,00.html

Kissinger has denied saying it.
The only evidence that Kissinger ever said this was a claim in the book, The Final Days, by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, in chapter 14 (p.194 in the 1995 paperback edition). Woodward & Bernstein claimed that one of Kissinger's political foes, Alexander Haig, had told someone unnamed, that he (Haig) had heard Kissinger say it. That's triple hearsay, made even weaker by the fact that one of the parties is anonymous. Kissinger has denied ever saying it, and it was never substantiated by Haig, nor by anyone of known identity who claimed to have heard it. As Kirkus Reviews noted about the whole book, "none of it is substantiated in any assessable way."
In fact, the quote is not even very plausible, on its face. Kissinger served with distinction in the U.S. Army during WWII, and was awarded the Bronze Star. He has always been very respectful of other servicemen and their sacrifices. For him to have said such a thing would have been wildly out of character. In fact, the awkward phrasing doesn't even sound like Kissinger, whose English prose is consistently measured and careful, despite his heavy accent, even when he speaks extemporaneously.
Misattributed

As quoted in The New York Times (28 October 1973)
Lesser known variant: Power is the great aphrodisiac.
As quoted in The New York Times (19 January 1971)
1970s

As quoted in "Special Section: They Are Fated to Succeed" in TIME magazine (2 January 1978) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,915860,00.html
1970s

As quoted in The New York Times Magazine (1 June 1969)
1960s
Variant: There can't be a crisis next week, my schedule is already full.

As quoted in The Washington Post (23 December 1973); he later joked further on this remark, on 10 March 1975 saying to Turkish Foreign Minister Melih Esenbel in Ankara, Turkey:
Before the Freedom of Information Act, I used to say at meetings "The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer." … But since the Freedom of Information Act, I'm afraid to say things like that.
As quoted in "Sunshine Week Document Friday! Kissinger Says, “The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer. But since the FOIA, I’m afraid to say things like that.” in Unredacted : The National Security Archive, unedited and uncensored http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/2012/03/15/document-friday-kissinger-says-the-illegal-we-do-immediately-the-unconstitutional-takes-a-little-longer-but-since-the-foia-im-afraid-to-say-things-like-that/
Included in Cable P860114-1573_MC_b http://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/P860114-1573_MC_b.html#efmCS3CUB Wikileaks
1970s

Diplomacy https://books.google.com/books?id=VPHQMG3Ue1wC&pg=PA21 (1994), p. 21
1990s

Statement of 1973, as quoted in "In Tapes, Nixon Rails About Jews and Blacks" in The New York Times (10 December 2010) http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/us/politics/11nixon.html.
1970s

As quoted in Sketchbook 1966-1971 (1971) by Max Frisch, p. 230
1970s

Clark Moustakas, as quoted in Sacred Simplicities: Meeting the Miracles in Our Lives (2004) by Lori Knutson, p. 141
Misattributed

A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace, 1812-22 (1957), p. 2
1950s

National Security Study Memorandum 200. Adapted as policy by President General Ford originally classified. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Study_Memorandum_200
1970s

A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace, 1812-22 (1957), p. 206
Paraphrased variant: The most fundamental problem of politics is not the control of wickedness but the limitation of righteousness.
Quoted by Walter Isaacson, " Henry Kissinger Reminds Us Why Realism Matters http://time.com/3275385/henry-kissinger/", Time, 4 September 2014
1950s

Phone call with Gen. Alexander Haig (9 December 1970) quoted in National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 123. The quotation was an excerpt from one of several phone conversations in which Kissinger ridiculed Nixon’s views about the war: "When Nixon proposed an escalation in the bombing of Cambodia, Kissinger and Haig felt obliged to humor the president while laughing at him behind his back" (Washington Post, May 27, 2004). Transcript at the National Security Archive http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB123/Box%2029,%20File%202,%20Kissinger%20%96%20Haig,%20Dec%209,%201970%208,50%20pm%20106-10.pdf
1970s

Statement of 1973, as quoted in Canadian and World Politics (2005) by John Ruypers, Marion Austin, Patrick Carter, and Terry G. Murphy
1970s

Cited in "Identifying the Wild Beast and Its Mark" http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/2004241?q=durant&p=par, in The Watchtower (1 March 2004)
2000s

Press conference held on 13 February, 1974

Kissinger to Nixon, quoted in Bass, G. J. (2014). The Blood telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a forgotten genocide.
Source: FRUS: Documents on South Asia, 1969–1972, vol. E-7 (online at http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76ve07), White House tapes, Oval Office 637-3, 12 December 1971, 8:45–9:42 a.m. Hereafter cited as FRUS, vol. E-7. quoted in Bass, G. J. (2014). The Blood telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a forgotten genocide.

Source: Henry Kissinger on Nixon, as quoted in Bass, G. J. (2014). The Blood telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a forgotten genocide. chapter 19

Source: See For the Record: Selected Statements 1977-1980 https://books.google.com.br/books?id=wcx4AAAAMAAJ, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1981.

The Coronavirus Pandemic Will Forever Alter the World Order, by Henry A. Kissinger, The Wall Street Journal https://www.henryakissinger.com/articles/the-coronavirus-pandemic-will-forever-alter-the-world-order/, April 3, 2020
2020s