Henry Kissinger citations
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Henry Kissinger, né Heinz Alfred Kissinger le 27 mai 1923 à Fürth en Allemagne, est un politologue et diplomate américain.

Allemand de naissance, de confession juive, il émigre aux États-Unis en 1938 pour fuir les persécutions nazies et est naturalisé en 1943. Interprète pour les services secrets américains durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale en Europe, il devient pour une courte période administrateur de la ville de Krefeld.

De retour aux États-Unis en 1946, il étudie à Harvard avant de se lancer en politique. D'abord conseiller à la sécurité nationale américaine, il devient secrétaire d'État du gouvernement républicain de Richard Nixon, poste qu'il occupe ensuite sous Gerald Ford. Promoteur de la Realpolitik, il joue un rôle important dans la diplomatie américaine au cours de la guerre froide de 1968 à 1977, en étant notamment, en 1973, l'un des artisans de la signature des accords de paix de Paris. Il inspire la politique de la Détente avec l’Union des républiques socialistes soviétiques et joue un rôle crucial dans le rapprochement avec la Chine à partir de 1971.

Kissinger reçoit le prix Nobel de la paix en 1973 pour son action dans la résolution de la guerre du Viêt Nam et de la guerre du Kippour. Il est le plus ancien lauréat du prix Nobel de la paix encore en vie. Figure médiatique, souvent décrit comme brillant, il reste un personnage controversé, sa politique étrangère lui crée de nombreuses inimitiés, aussi bien du côté de la gauche pacifiste, de certaines associations humanitaires que de la droite anticommuniste.

Il est actuellement président de Kissinger Associates dont il est également le fondateur. Entreprise de conseil en relations internationales, elle a pour clients des firmes multinationales qu'elle assiste dans leurs négociations de contrats commerciaux avec des États. Wikipedia  

✵ 27. mai 1923 – 29. novembre 2023   •   Autres noms Henry A. Kissinger
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Henry Kissinger: 50   citations 0   J'aime

Henry Kissinger: Citations en anglais

“The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy. And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”

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

“Intellectuals are cynical and cynics have never built a cathedral.”

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

“If you mean by "military victory" an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible.”

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

“Accept everything about yourself — I mean everything, You are you and that is the beginning and the end — no apologies, no regrets.”

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

“Wherever a lessening of population pressures through reduced birth rates can increase the prospects for such stability, population policy becomes relevant to resource supplies and to the economic interests of the United States.”

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

“It is barely conceivable that there are people who like war.”

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

“… the most fundamental problem of politics, which is not the control of wickedness but the limitation of righteousness.”

Henry Kissinger livre A World Restored

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

“[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.”

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

“The issue before us is whether the 21st century belongs to China. And I would say that China will be preoccupied with enormous problems internally, domestically with its immediate environment, and that I have enormous difficulty imagining it will be dominated by China, and indeed, as I will conclude, I believe that the concept that some country will dominate the world, is in itself a misunderstanding of the world in which we now live… In the geopolitical situation, China historically has been surrounded by a group of smaller countries, which themselves were not individually able to threathen China, but which united, could cause a threat to China, and therefore historically, Chinese foreign policy can be described as "barbarian management". So China had never had to deal in a world of countries of approximately equal strength, and so to adjust to such a world, is in itself a profound challenge to China, which now has 14 countries on its borders, some of which are small, but can project their nationality into China, some of which are large, and historically significant, so that any attempt by Chinese to dominate the world, would evoke a counter-reaction that would be disastrous for the peace of the world.”

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

“In the 1950s and 1960s we put several thousand nuclear weapons into Europe. To be sure, we had no precise idea of what to do with them.”

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

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

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

“We are the ones who have been operating against our public opinion, against our bureaucracy, at the very edge of legality.”

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.

“If the President had his way, we’d have a nuclear war every week.”

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

“The security of Israel is a moral imperative for all free peoples.”

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

“The world’s democracies need to defend and sustain their Enlightenment values. A global retreat from balancing power with legitimacy will cause the social contract to disintegrate both domestically and internationally.”

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

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