Nixon & Kissenger - On D tente

Our adversaries watch for weakness or a flagging will, which to them spells opportunity. - Henry Kissenger, address, Georgetown University, June 28, 1977.

The aggressor’s edge must be neutralized by the power and will of those threatened by aggressors. - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

Much of the world now bears the imprint of the creative American spirit. We have achieved great things, and even greater achievement is needed to master the future. In a world of new complexities and high hopes, Americans can show once again that we will meet our challenges. - Henry Kissenger, address at Georgetown University, June 28, 1977.

America's economic vitality is our greatest asset. It is the product of the creative spirit of a free and industrious people and of an economic system that gives opportunity to private incentive. It is the foundation of our prosperity, our military strength, and constructive relationships in a world of peace. - Henry Kissenger, address at Georgetown University. June 28, 1977.

We are not just any nation. - Henry Kissenger, lecture, New York University, September 19, 1977.

If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest shopping center in the world? - Richard M. Nixon.

I know America. I know the heart of America is good. - Richard M. Nixon, First Inaugural Address, January 20, 1969.

The American dream does not come to those who fall asleep. - Richard M. Nixon, First Inaugural Address, January 20, 1969.

We have endured a long night of the American spirit. But as our eyes catch the dimness of the first rays of dawn, let us not curse the remaining dark. Let us gather the light.
Our destiny offers, not the cup of despair, but the chalice of opportunity. So let us seize it, not in fear, but in gladness—and, "riders on the earth together," let us go forward, firm in our faith, steadfast in our purpose, cautious of the dangers; but sustained by our confidence in the will of God and the promise of man. - Richard M. Nixon, First Inaugural Address, January 20, 1969.

Let us remember that America was built not by government, but by people—not by welfare, but by work—not by shirking responsibility, but by seeking responsibility. - Richard M. Nixon, Second Inaugural Address, January 20, 1973.

The time has come for us to renew our faith in ourselves and in America.
    In recent years, that faith has been challenged.
    Our children have been taught to be ashamed of their country, ashamed of their parents, ashamed of America's record at home and of its role in the world.
    At every turn, we have been beset by those who find everything wrong with America and little that is right. But I am confident that this will not be the judgment of history on these remarkable times in which we are privileged to live.
    America's record in this century has been unparalleled in the world's history for its responsibility, for its generosity, for its creativity and for its progress.
    Let us be proud that our system has produced and provided more freedom and more abundance, more widely shared, than any other system in the history of the world.
    Let us be proud that in each of the four wars in which we have been engaged in this century, including the one we are now bringing to an end, we have fought not for our selfish advantage, but to help others resist aggression.
    Let us be proud that by our bold, new initiatives, and by our steadfastness for peace with honor, we have made a break-through toward creating in the world what the world has not known before—a structure of peace that can last, not merely for our time, but for generations to come.
    - Richard M. Nixon, Second Inaugural Address, January 20, 1973.

America is made up of people of many nationalities who came here voluntarily. Whole nations were absorbed into the Russian empire and are kept there by force. We have Armenians and Lithuanians; they have Armenia and Lithuania. - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

From the time of the declaration of Independence, Americans have believed that this country has a moral significance for the world. The United States was created as a conscious act by men and women dedicated to a set of political and ethical principles they held to be of universal meaning. - Henry Kissenger, lecture, New York University, September 19, 1977.

The American people have not been the hope of mankind through their history by subordinating moral values to tactical experience. - Henry Kissenger, November 13, 1977.

Standing in this same place a third of a century ago, Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed a Nation ravaged by depression and gripped in fear. He could say in surveying the Nation's troubles: "They concern, thank God, only material things."
    Our crisis today is the reverse.
    We have found ourselves rich in goods, but ragged in spirit; reaching with magnificent precision for the moon, but falling into raucous discord on earth.
    We are caught in war, wanting peace. We are torn by division, wanting unity. We see around us empty lives, wanting fulfillment. We see tasks that need doing, waiting for hands to do them.
    To a crisis of the spirit, we need an answer of the spirit.
    To find that answer, we need only look within ourselves. - Richard M. Nixon, First Inaugural Address, January 20, 1969.

We see the hope of tomorrow in the youth of today. I know America's youth. I believe in them. We can be proud that they are better educated, more committed, more passionately driven by conscience than any generation in our history. - Richard M. Nixon, First Inaugural Address, January 20, 1969.

No people has ever been so close to the achievement of a just and abundant society, or so possessed of the will to achieve it. - Richard M. Nixon, First Inaugural Address, January 20, 1969.

We have no sense of arrogance – we honestly, almost naively, like people and want to get along with them. We lack often a sense of subtlety but that will come after a few hundred more years of civilization. - Richard M. Nixon, Diary, 1972.

If the desire to conciliate becomes the sole operational basis of policy, we run the risk that the threat of war will become a weapon of blackmail; our allies and our moral values will both be permanently in danger. The desire for peace will be transformed into a caricature of itself, and become instead the beginning of appeasement. - Henry Kissenger, to the Senate Committee of Foreign Relations. July 31, 1979.

To lower our voices would be a simple thing.
In these difficult years, America has suffered from a fever of words; from inflated rhetoric that promises more than it can deliver; from angry rhetoric that fans discontents into hatreds; from bombastic rhetoric that postures instead of persuading.
We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another—until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices. - Richard M. Nixon, First Inaugural Address, January 20, 1969.

Never in history has it happened that a nation achieved superiority in all significant weapons categories without seeking to translate it at some point into some foreign policy benefit. - Henry Kissenger, Speech in Brussels. September 1, 1979.

Arms control must never be pursued as an end in itself, in isolation from other goals.... Control of arms cannot be separated from the threats that require us to maintain arms. If war comes, it will be primarily because of failure to resolve political differences, combined with a failure of the United States to maintain forces to dissuade aggressors from challenging our interests. - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

If arms control cannot limit and reduce the threat, it must not limit our ability to deal with it, directly or indirectly. - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

We must bear in mind that it is better to have no agreement than to have a bad agreement. - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

In an era of peace, in a world of bureaucracy and mass production, there is no galvanizing crisis and little opportunity for heroic performance. A relativist age debunks authority and puts nothing in its place as an organizing principle of society. Massive impersonal bureaucracy disillusions the citizen with the responsiveness of his government, and simultaneously makes the task of elected officials more difficult. - Henry Kissenger, conference on Eurocommunism, June 9, 1977.

In a bureaucratic dispute the side having no better argument than its hierarchical right is likely to lose. Presidents listen to advisors whose views they think they need, not those who insist on a hearing because of the organizational chart. - Henry Kissenger, 1979.

The future of business is inseparable from the future of industrial democracy. - Henry Kissenger, address at Georgetown University, June 28, 1977.

International business depends decisively on International politics. - Henry Kissenger, address at Georgetown University, June 28, 1977.

Consistent expansion without inflation requires not only sound national policy but an increasing coordination among the nations in the industrial world. We must learn more effectively to synchronize our national decision-making so that national policies can complement and reinforce each other, and not be at cross-purposes. - Henry Kissenger, address at Georgetown University, June 28, 1977.

In every area, political and economic objectives intersect. In every area, private enterprise, with sensitivity to the broad national framework and by doing what business is good at, can make a vast contribution to the world's welfare and to international peace. - Henry Kissenger, address at Georgetown University, June 28, 1977.

Whenever countries of comparable resources have run the race together — Austria and Czechoslovakia, West and East Germany, Greece and Bulgaria, South and North Korea — the economy with a significant private sector has clearly done more in fulfilling the aspirations of its people than has its socialist counterpart. The world community cannot ignore the affairs of business if it is successfully to shape a new political structure that serves peace and the well-being of mankind. - Henry Kissenger, address at Georgetown University, June 28, 1977.

The Capitalist system works on the basis of the profit motive economically. The Soviet system works on the basis of the profit motive militarily and territorially. - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

A man who has never lost himself in a cause bigger than himself has missed one of life’s mountaintop experiences. Only in losing himself does he find himself. Only then does he discover all the latent strengths he never knew he had and which would otherwise have remained dormant. - Richard Nixon, Six Crisis, 1962.

Until he has been part of a cause larger than himself, no man is truly whole. - Richard M. Nixon, First Inaugural Address, January 20, 1969.

In most cases, the cause that originally draws people to the guerilla organization is not love of communism but hatred of foreigners. - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

The winds of change are ultimately blowing from the West. The men and women of Eastern Europe are certainly aware that the West, for all its doubt and sense of spiritual dilemma, is the vanguard of modernization, the vital source of learning and of much modern culture, and a haven of the free human spirit. - Henry Kissenger, conference on Eurocommunism. June 9, 1977.

The people’s right to change what does not work is one of the greatest principles of our system of government. - Richard M. Nixon, Presidential Report, March 1972.

There is a turmoil under the heavens, and we have the opportunity to end it. - Chou En-Lai, to Kissenger, Jan., 1976.

Our perception of the global challenge at the same time tempted us to distant enterprises and prevented us from meeting them conclusively. - Henry Kissenger.

If the Soviet bloc can present its challenges in less than all-out form, it may gain a crucial advantage. Every move on it's part will then pose the appalling dilemma of whether we are willing to commit suicide to prevent encroachments, which do not, each in itself, seem to threaten existence directly but which may be steps on the road to destruction. - Henry Kissenger. Nuclear Weapons & Foreign Policy,1957.

What in God's name is strategic superiority? What is the significance of it, politically, militarily, operationally, at these levels of numbers? What do you do with it? - Henry Kissenger, 1974.

Communist success in not a foregone conclusion; United States hesitation or ambiguity can, however, contribute to it. - Henry Kissenger, conference on Eurocommunism, June 9, 1977.

For thirty years the world balance of power, the cohesion of the democracies, the health of the world economy, the prospects for growth in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and the hopes for freedom everywhere have been sustained by the United States. - Henry Kissenger, lecture at New York University, September 19, 1977.

Every Western government has an obligation to demonstrate to its people that it is making a serious effort to avoid the dangers of war.... On the other hand, one must also be sure that peace does not become the only objective because, if it becomes the only objective, it will lead to blackmail. To navigate between these two extremes is the art of statesmanship; not to say you are for or against detente, or that you are for or against the Cold War. - Henry Kissenger, Der Spiegel,July 1978.

To risk everything on one throw of the dice would, in any event, be against the communist philosophy of having history on their side. - Henry Kissenger, Der Spiegel,July 1978.

The side that can defend its interests only by threatening to initiate the mutual mass extermination of civilians will gradually slide toward strategic, and therefore eventually geopolitical, paralysis. - Henry Kissenger, to Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, July 31, 1979.

No responsible leader can want to face the 1980's with the present military prospects. - Henry Kissenger, to Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, July 31, 1979.

We must maintain a military balance that does not tempt aggression against our friends or allies, against our vital interests, or in the extreme case against ourselves. - Henry Kissenger, to Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, July 31, 1979.

Both mankind's hopes and fears are bound up with the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union. These two countries possess huge nuclear arsenals; they also espouse sharply opposing concepts of justice and hold conflicting visions of the future. - Henry Kissenger, to Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, July 31, 1979.

In the realm of strategic doctrine, paradoxically it was those most alarmed at the arms race who clung to the most bloodthirsty targeting strategies [Mutual Assured Destruction — M.A.D.] , in the hope that these would obviate the need to strengthen or increase our strategic forces. - Henry Kissenger, to Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, July 31, 1979.

It cannot have occurred often in history that it was considered an advantageous military doctrine to make your own country deliberately vulnerable.... Under the doctrine of "assured destruction," nuclear war became not a military problem but one of engineering; it depended on theoretical calculations of the amount of economic and industrial damage that one needed to inflict on the other side; it was therefor essentially independent of the forces the other side was creating. - Henry Kissenger, Brussels, September 1, 1979.

To maintain an alliance [NATO] in peacetime without conflict for a generation is extremely rare in history. And it is inherent in a process in which an alliance has been successful, in which deterrence has worked, that no one will be able to prove why it has worked. Was it because we conducted the correct policy? Was it because the Soviet Union never had any intention to attack us in the first place? Was it because of the policies of strength of some countries, or the policies of accommodation of other countries. - Henry Kissenger, Brussels, September 1, 1979.

We are at war. We are engaged in a titanic struggle in which the fates of nations are being decided. In war the fact that a surrounded garrison surrenders without any shots being fired makes its capture no less a military victory for one side and a defeat for the other. When the Soviet Union advances by using proxy troops, its conquests are still Soviet victories and Western defeats. - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

It is also the first total war because of the nature of our adversaries: because theirs is a totalitarian system, advancing under the banner of an ideology in which even the minds of its people are the property of the state. - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

The fact is that a strategic advantage for the United States and the West reduces the danger of war or defeat without war. A strategic advantage for the Soviet Union increases the danger of war or defeat of the West without war. - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

The basic rule of Soviet behavior was laid down years ago by Lenin: Probe with bayonets. If you encounter mush, continue. The question is which will the Soviets encounter: steel or mush? - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

There is no mystery about Soviet intentions. The Kremlin leaders do not want war, but they do want the world. - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

Certainly Communist parties are willing to come to power by democratic means. But could they permit the democratic process to reverse what they see as the inevitable path of "historical progress"? Would they maintain the institutions -- press, parties, unions, enterprises -- that would represent the principal threat to their power? Would they safeguard the freedoms that could turn into instruments of their future defeat? No Communist Party that governed alone has ever done so, and the vast majority of those democratic parties which entered into coalitions with European Communists are now in the indexes of history books rather than in ministries or parliaments. - Henry Kissenger, Conference on Eurocommunism, June 9, 1977.

By the very nature of their beliefs Communists will be driven to bring about institutional changes that would make their ascendance permanent. - Henry Kissenger, Conference on Eurocommunism, June 9, 1977.

Anticommunism is not enough; there must be a response to legitimate social and economic aspirations, and there must be reform of the inequities from which these antidemocratic forces derive much of their appeal. - Henry Kissenger, Conference on Eurocommunism, June 9, 1977.

In no Western European country has the Communist Party ever fairly won more than about a third of the vote. Their most powerful weapons are fear, distrust, and discouragement; their principal asset is the myth of their inevitability. - Henry Kissenger, Conference on Eurocommunism,June 9, 1977.

We are entitled to a certain skepticism about the sincerity of declarations of independence which coincide so precisely with electoral self-interest. One need not be a cynic to wonder at the decision of the French Communists, traditionally perhaps the most Stalinist party in Western Europe, to renounce the Soviet concept of dictatorship of the proletariat without a single dissenting vote among 1,700 delegates, as they did at their Party Congress in February, 1976, when all previous Party congresses had endorsed the same dictatorship of the proletariat by a similar vote of 1,700 to nothing. - Henry Kissenger, Conference on Eurocommunism, June 9, 1977.

Throughout their existence, the guiding principle of the Communist Parties has been their insistence that a minority had to seize power as the vanguard of the working class and impose its views on the rest of the population. This disdain for democratic procedures — whether it is presented in the traditional form of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" or wrapped in Gramsci's more elegant phrase, "the hegemony of the working class" — is precisely what has historically distinguished the Communist from the Socialist parties. - Henry Kissenger, Conference on Eurocommunism, June 9, 1977.

Only in Western Europe and in the United States are there still illusions about the nature of Communist parties. In Eastern Europe, boredom, intellectual emptiness, inefficiency, and stultifying bureaucratism have been obvious for decades. Countries which used to be leading industrial powers have been reduced to mediocrity and stagnation; nations with long democratic traditions have seen the destruction of civil liberties and democratic practices. The countries of the West would mortgage their future if they closed their eyes to this reality. - Henry Kissenger, Conference on Eurocommunism, June 9, 1977.

The paradox [is] that the Communist states have really no normal method for arriving at decisions except by the contest of bureaucratic forces, and within that contest the military establishment always has a very great voice. Therefore, inevitably, it has a claim on resources. - Henry Kissenger, Der Spiegel,July, 1978.

Such a system cannot represent the wave of the future. Nor has any planned economy ever been able to match the performance of a market economy. - Henry Kissenger, to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 10, 1980.

Neutrality where the Communists are concerned means three things: we get out, they stay in; they take over. - Richard Nixon, speech in New York, January 26, 1965.

Closed borders, barbed wire, walls, guards with orders to shoot on sight any attempting to flee -- these are the mark of communist control and the symbols of Soviet advance. - Richard M. Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

There is only one threat to world peace, the one that is presented by the internationalist communist conspiracy. - Richard M. Nixon, The Real War. 1980.

No people has ever freely chosen to live under communism. No nation remains under communist rule except through force. No system of government has been more successful at extending its domination over other nations and less successful at winning the apporval of the people of those nations. - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

Just as the con man knows how to play on his victim’s greed and self-importance, so does the Kremlin know precisely how to play on its target’s romatic idealism and on his grandiose dreams of remaking whole societies in his own image. - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

The behind-the-scenes power structure in Washington is often called the “iron triangle”: a three-sided set of relationships composed of congressional lobbyists, congressional committee and subcommittee members and their staffs. - Richard Nixon, The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, 1978.

If being a liberal means federalizing everything, then I’m no liberal. If being a conservative means turning back the clock, denying problems that exist, then I’m no conservative. - Richard Nixon. The Memoirs of Richard Nixon. 1978.

Problems neglected are crisis invited. - Henry Kissenger, Brussels. September 1, 1979.

Going through the necessary soul searching of deciding whether to fight a battle, or to run away from it, is far more difficult than the battle itself. - Richard Nixon, Six Crisis. 1962.

What determines success or failure in handling a crisis is the ability to keep coldly objective when emotions are running high. - Richard Nixon, Six Crisis. 1962.

The ability to be cool, confident, and decisive in crisis is not an inherited characteristic but is the direct result of how well the individual has prepared himself for the battle. - Richard Nixon, Six Crisis. 1962.

Nations live or die by the way they respond to the particular challenges they face. Those challenges may be internal or external; they may be faced by a nation alone or in concert with other nations; they may come gradually or suddenly. There is no immutable law of nature that says only the unjust will be afflicted, or that the just will prevail. While might certainly does not make right, neither does right itself make might. The time when a nation most craves ease may be the moment when it can least afford to let down its guard. The moment when it most wishes it could address its domestic needs may be the moment when it most urgently has to confront an external threat. The nation that survives is the one that rises to meet that moment: that has the wisdom to recognize the threat and the will to turn it back, and that does so before it is too late. - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

Some of the best decisions ever made by presidents were made when they were not too popular. - Richard Nixon, speech in Chicago Illinois. March 15, 1974.

I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. - Richard Nixon, resignation speech. August 8, 1975.

In war the fact that a surrounded garrison surrenders without any shots being fired makes its capture no less a military victory for one side and a defeat for the other. - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

The American defense establishment should never be a sacred cow, but on the other hand, the American military should never be anybody’s scapegoat. - Richard Nixon, speech at the Air Force Academy. June 1969.

In too many democratic countries the young are offered too little inspiration; their elders too often have lost confidence in their own values. Too frequently democratic leaders are consumed by winning and holding office and are unable to demonstrate the force of conviction and philosophical self-assurance of their radical opponents. - Henry Kissenger, Conference on Eurocommunism, June 9, 1977.

It is in the logic of the democratic political process (and especially of a pluralistic society such as ours) that points of view contrary to that of whatever administration is in office will emerge. - Henry Kissenger, Der Spiegel, July 1978.

No democracy can court conflict. - Henry Kissenger, to Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, July 31, 1979.

We must act decisively and we must keep in mind that the curse of democracies in the recent past, including the American democracy, has been the belief that if something is done halfheartedly, or somehow incompetently, one avoids domestic difficulties. - Henry Kissenger, remarks, January 31, 1980.

We are in danger of making the world safe not for democracy, but for totalitarian radicalism. - Henry Kissenger, to the Senate, July 31, 1980.

What we consider "normal" — constitutional democracy — is in fact a rarity both in the sweeps of history and on the breadth of the planet. This is no accident. Constitutional democracy derives authority from an abstraction: obedience to law. But constitutionalism can function only if law is believed either to reflect an absolute standard of truth or at least to grow out of a generally accepted political process. In most parts of the world, and in most periods of time, these conditions have not existed. Law has been the product of personal authority, not of constitutional arrangements; the political process has been viewed as determining who has the right to issue orders. - Henry Kissenger, to the Senate, July 31, 1980.

Democracies are not well equipped to fight prolonged wars. A democracy fights well wfter its morale is galvanized by an enemy attack and it gears up its war production. A totalitarian power can coerce its population into fighting indefinitely. But a democracy fights well only as long as public opinion supports the war, and public opinion will not continue to support a war that drags on without tangible signs of progress. - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

The longer deterrence succeeds, the more difficult it is to demonstrate what made it work. - Henry Kissenger.

American strategic doctrine based deterrence largely on our theoretical capacity to inflict civilian casualties and economic damage on the Soviet union, regardless of the size of the Soviet forces. This confused strategy with economic analysis. It not only overlooked the moral inhibitions that would surely affect an American president's willingness to launch such an attack; it also encouraged equanimity in the face of the relentless Soviet strategic buildup. - Henry Kissenger, to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 10, 1980.

A rational deterrent cannot be based on irrational responses. - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

There are two aspects to national will. There is will as demonstrated by the nation itself, and there is will as perceived by the nation’s adversaries. In averting the ultimate challenge, perceived will can be as important as actual will. - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

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. - Henry Kissenger.

The art of diplomacy is to move events carefully and shape them towards achievable ends. - Henry Kissenger, November 13, 1977.

The practice of diplomacy is not something that can be learned from texts, historical or otherwise. - Henry Kissenger, The Washington Quarterly, January 1978.

Even by accident we're bound to do something right. - Henry Kissenger, Brussels, Sept. 1, 1979.

There is in the West a tendency to treat d_tente quite theatrically; that is to say, not as a balancing of national interests and negotiations on the basis of strategic realities but rather as an exercise in strenuous goodwill, in which one removes by understanding the suspiciousness of a nation that is assumed to have no other motive to attack. This tendency to treat d_tente as an exercise in psychotherapy, or as an attempt at good personal relations, or as an effort in which individual leaders try gain domestic support by providing that they a special way in Moscow — that is disastrous for the West. And it is the corollary of the "[mutual] assured destruction" theory, in the sense that it always provides an alibi for not doing what needs to be done. - Henry Kissenger, Brussels, Sept. 1, 1979.

The Soviets tend to treat our negotiators the way psychiatrists treat their patients: No matter what you say to them, they think they understand us better than we understand ourselves. - Henry Kissenger, remarks. January 31,1980.

There has been a reluctance to face the geopolitical facts of life, which are: that a statesman has the choice of acting early in the evolution of events; at that time, his knowledge will be very limited and he has to trust his judgement; or he can wait, until he knows for certain what is happening. Then he may pay a fearful price. - Henry Kissenger, remarks, January 31,1980.

I have come to know the leaders of the world, and the great forces, the hatreds, the fears that divide the world.
I know that peace does not come through wishing for it—that there is no substitute for days and even years of patient and prolonged diplomacy. - Richard M. Nixon, First Inaugural Address, January 20, 1969.

Great nations act on the basis of interest, not sentiment, but good personal relationships can do a great deal toward making diefference manageable and ties stronger. - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

The very success of Western societies in maintaining prosperity at a level undreamed of even forty years ago sometimes contributes to their malaise. Intellectuals condemn society for materialism when it is prosperous and for injustice when it fails to ensure prosperity. - Henry Kissenger, Conference on Eurocommunism, June 9, 1977.

No issue is more important to the future vision of international order than the ways in which the world will manage the output and distribution of goods and services. International economics has become a crucial foreign policy challenge. - Henry Kissenger, address at Georgetown University, June 28, 1977.

The world economy has become interdependent; our prosperity is to some extent hostage to the decisions on raw materials, prices, and investment in distant countries whose purposes are not necessarily compatible with ours. - Henry Kissenger, lecture, NYC, Sept 19. 1977.

Economically, capitalism works and communism does not. - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

What are our schools for if not indoctrination against Communism? - Richard Nixon.

I also believe that academic freedom should protect the right of a professor or student to advocate Marxism, socialism, communism, or any other minority viewpoint — no matter how distasteful to the majority, provided. - Richard M. Nixon.

We cannot expect to make everyone our friend, but we can try to make no one our enemy. - Richard M. Nixon, First Inaugural Address, January 20, 1969.

A statesman who too far outruns the experience of his people will fail in achieving a domestic consensus, however wise his policies.... A statesman who limits his policy to the experience of his people will doom himself to sterility.... - Henry Kissenger.

We shall support vigorously the principle that no country has the right to impose its will or rule on another by force. - Richard M. Nixon, Second Inaugural Address, January 20, 1973.

We will never be able to contribute to building a stable and creative world order until we first build some conception of it. - Henry Kissenger.

There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full. - Henry Kissenger, New York Times Magazine, June 1, 1969.

Detente is not rooted in agreement on values; it becomes above all necessary because each side recognizes that the other is a potential adversary in a nuclear war. To us, detente is a process of managing relations with a potentially hostile country in order to preserve peace while maintaining our vital interests. In a nuclear age, this is in itself an objective not without moral validity--it may indeed be the most profound moral imperative of all. - Henry Kissenger, April 1974.

The United States cannot pursue a policy of selective reliability. We cannot abandon friends in one part of the world without jeopardizing the security of friends everywhere. - Henry Kissenger, March 26, 1975.

It is a paradox of the contemporary world that if we wait until these dangers become realities we will lose the chance to do anything about them. - Henry Kissenger, lecture, New York University. September 19, 1977.

When a performer is taking careful and complicated steps on a high wire, it is profoundly inappropriate, not to say dangerous, for a spectator in a seat far below to shout at him that he is putting his toe in the wrong place. - Henry Kissenger, lecture, New York University. September 19, 1977.

A strong American role — political, military, and economic — in world affairs is indispensable to peace, security and prosperity. Enlightened American leadership in international diplomacy is equally vital to world order and to the flourishing of the world economy. - Henry Kissenger, address at Georgetown University, June 28, 1977.

The United States cannot possibly carry all the burdens, devise all the programs, or provide all the resources, either for international security or for economic development. - Henry Kissenger, address at Georgetown University, June 28, 1977.

Modern foreign policy, by its very complexity, does not lend itself to instant solutions. - Henry Kissenger, lecture, New York University, September 19, 1977.

The conduct of foreign policy requires a fine balance between continuity and change. - Henry Kissenger, lecture, New York University, September 19, 1977.

A foreign policy that stresses continuity above all else would be stultifying and would in time be overwhelmed by events. - Henry Kissenger, lecture, New York University, September 19, 1977.

Any serious foreign policy must begin with the need for survival. And survival has its practical necessities. A nation does not willingly delegate control over its future.... All serious foreign policy therefore begins with maintaining a balance of power — a scope for action, a capacity to affect events and conditions. Without that capacity a nation is reduced to striking empty poses. - Henry Kissenger, lecture, New York University, September 19, 1977.

The United States should conduct its policies toward its allies in a way that strengthens the moderate, progressive, and democratic governments of Western Europe. - Henry Kissenger, conference on Eurocommunism. June 9, 1977.

The unity and cooperative action of the democracies are crucial to all that America does in the world. Western unity defends not only our security but our way of life and the most basic moral values of our civilization. On this we cannot be neutral. To foster these principles deserves the same dedication and commitment that inspired the most imaginative periods of American diplomacy. - Henry Kissenger, conference on Eurocommunism, June 9, 1977.

For the first time in our history, a small group of nations [OPEC] controlling a scarce resource could over time be tempted to pressure us into foreign policy decisions not dictated by our national interest. - Henry Kissenger, National Conference of State Legislators, August 3, 1977.

In short, the energy crisis has placed at risk the entire of our foreign policy. It mortgages the prospect of our own economy; it weakens the industrial democracies economically and potentially militarily; it undermines the world economy; and it frustrates the hope for progress of most of the new nations. - Henry Kissenger, National Conference of State Legislators, August 3, 1977.

The key to successful foreign policy is a sense of proportion. Some of the most serious errors of our foreign policy, both of overcommitment and withdrawal, have occurred when we lost the sense of balance between our interests and our ideals. - Henry Kissenger, lecture, New York University, September 19, 1877.

For the first time in American history we can neither dominate the world nor escape from it. Henceforth this country will be engaged in world affairs by reality and not by choice. America must now learn to conduct foreign policy as other nations have had to conduct it — with patience, subtilely, imagination, and perseverance. - Henry Kissenger, lecture, New York University, September 19, 1877.

Whenever it has been forced to wield its great power, America has also been driven to search its conscience: How does our foreign policy serve moral ends? How can America carry out its role as a humane example and champion of justice in a world in which power is still often the final arbiter? How do we reconcile ends and means, principle and survival? How do we keep secure both our existence and our values? These have been the moral and intellectual dilemmas of the United States for two hundred years. - Henry Kissenger, lecture, New York University, September 19, 1877.

I think what is essential to be done is that there is a clearly articulated concept of American foreign policy which everybody can understand and toward which other nations and our own public can orient themselves. - Henry Kissenger, Der Spiegel, July, 1978.

One cannot look at what has happened in Afghanistan, Aden, Ethiopia, and Angola and draw a line between these various countries without coming to certain geopolitical conclusions. - Henry Kissenger, 1978.

The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously. - Henry Kissenger, "They are Fated to Succeed," Time. January 2, 1978.

It is dangerously arrogant to believe that foreign policy can be conducted effectively without knowing something of how other generations have faced comparable problems — the compromises they have had to make, how their best judgements turned out, and how limited human foresight is, even in the best men and under optimal circumstances. - Henry Kissenger, The Washington Quarterly. January, 1978.

Any nation has to make a choice between being psychologically certain and paying a heavy price if it turns out to be wrong, or being psychologically uncertain and paying a low price for taking the necessary precautions. My point is that it would have been relatively easy to stop Hitler in 1936, after the occupation of the Rhineland, but people would still debate today whether he was a misunderstood nationalist or a maniac bent on world domination. By 1941, everybody knew who Hitler was; and it was knowledge for which one had to pay 20 million lives. - Henry Kissenger, Der Spiegel. July, 1978.

A country without strength will become the play thing of forces out of its control, but a country that makes its decisions only on military grounds will be dragged into adventures with consequences it cannot foresee. - Henry Kissenger, The Washington Quarterly, January, 1978.

Foreign policy is a form of art and not a precise science. - Henry Kissenger, The Washington Quarterly, January, 1978.

In the abstract, it might appear that it is better to gear policy to the capabilities of the other side rather than to its intentions. Yet if this is carried to an extreme, it leads to a policy that seeks empire or hegemony for oneself. The only way to be sure the other side is not capable of harming you is to reduce it to impotence. Absolute security for all other sides. - Henry Kissenger, The Washington Quarterly. January, 1978.

The problem in foreign policy is not simply to state an objective but be able to carry it out over an extended period of time in such a manner that it enhances the impression of other countries that one knows how to achieve one's objective. Otherwise even the noblest goal can wind up creating an impression of impotence. - Henry Kissenger, Der Spiegel. July, 1978.

The hardest thing to understand about foreign policy is that it has to be extended over time and that there are no decisive individual moves. - Henry Kissenger, Der Spiegel. July, 1978. - Henry Kissenger, Der Spiegel. July, 1978.

A foreign policy that makes human rights its cornerstone, invites revolution. - Henry Kissenger. 1979.

If present trends continue, we face the chilling prospect of a world sliding gradually out of control, with our relative military power declining, with our economic lifeline vulnerable to blackmail, with hostile forces growing more rapidly than our ability to deal with them, and fewer and fewer nations friendly to us surviving. - Henry Kissenger, to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, July 31, 1979.

We must be careful not to use lack of success in the one area as an alibi for failure to perform in the other. - Henry Kissenger, The Economist. February 10, 1979.

We cannot resign from the problem by renouncing the role of policeman. Of course, the term policeman has a perjorative ring. The fact remains that in a broad sense the balance of power is a kind of policeman, whose responsibility is to prevent peaceful countries from feeling impotent and aggressive countries from becoming reckless. - Henry Kissenger, The Economist, February 10, 1979.

At first the price for our ambivalence will be paid by others; in time — and fearfully — it will be paid by us. - Henry Kissenger, to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 10, 1980.

Our people surely understand the moral difference between tyranny, and freedom and the necessity of both strength and survival; To maintain the proper balance is the task of leadership. - Henry Kissenger, to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 10, 1980.

The national interest of the United States does not change in years divisible by four.... America is the linchpin of the free world’s security, the repository of the world’s hope for progress. If every four years the basic premises of our foreign policy are up for grabs, America itself becomes an element of instability in the world. - Henry Kissenger, to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 10, 1980.

Somewhere, somehow, the U.S. must show that it is capable of rewarding a friend or penalizing an opponent. It must be made clear... that our allies benefit from association with us and our enemies suffer. It is a simpleminded proposition perhaps, but for a great power it is the prerequisite, indeed the definition, of an effective foreign policy. - Henry Kissenger, to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 10, 1980.

I believe in building bridges but we should build only our end of the bridge. - Richard Nixon, speech in California. July 1967.

Any American policy must come urgently to grips with the reality of China. There is no place on this small planet for a billion of its potentially most able people to live in angry isolation. - Richard M. Nixon, October, 1967.

Let us be proud that in each of the four wars in which we have been engaged in this country, including the one we are now bringing to an end, we have fought not for selfish advantage, but to help others resist aggression. - Richard Nixon, 2nd inaugural address, January 20, 1973.

Abroad, the shift from old policies to new has not been a retreat from our responsibilities, but a better way to peace. - Richard M. Nixon, Second Inaugural Address, January 20, 1973.

We shall do our share in defending peace and freedom in the world. But we shall expect others to do their share.
The time has passed when America will make every other nation's conflict our own, or make every other nation's future our responsibility, or presume to tell the people of other nations how to manage their own affairs. - Richard M. Nixon, Second Inaugural Address, January 20, 1973.

Despite its poverty and the harshness of its land, Texas-sized Afghanistan has long been a cockpit of great-power intrigue for the same reason that it used to be called “the turnstile of Asia’s fate.” With Iran on the west, Pakistan on the south, China to the east, and a thousand mile border with the Soviet Union on the north, Afghanistan has traditionally been one one of those points where the great thrusts of empire met.
Throughout history Afghanistan has been a cross-roads for conquerors; Alexander the Great; Genghis Khan, and Tamerlane have all ridden across Afghanistan’s duty hills in their quest for empire... - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

World leadership also requires something that is in many ways alien to the American cast of mind. It requires placing limits on idealsim, compromising with reality, at times matching duplicity with duplicity, and even brutality with brutality. After a century and a half of holding the world at arms length, of declining to be contaminated by contact with its intrigues and its tyrannies, it requires marching onto the field and playing the game of power diplomacy as a contact sport - no matter who is in the lineup on the other team. And it requires doing so even when the rules imposed on the game are rules that we would not have chosen. - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

We must understand that détente is not a love feast. - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

Either we act like a great power or we will be reduced to a minor power, and thus reduced we will not survive – nor will freedom or Western values survive. - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

If the United States has a responsibility to encourage political freedom throughout the world, we surely have a duty to leave no doubt about or convictions. - Henry Kissenger, Conference on Eurocommunism. June 9, 1977.

The power of free men and women and free nations acting in concert, confident of their strength and of their destiny, cannot be matched by any totalitarian regime or totalitarian movement. The spirit of freedom can never be crushed. But freedom can be lost gradually. - Henry Kissenger, Conference on Eurocommunism. June 9, 1977.

When freedom degenerates into anarchy, the human personality becomes subject to arbitrary, brutal, and capricious forces — witness aberrations of terrorism in even the most human societies. - Henry Kissenger, lecture, New York University, September 19, 1977.

The essence of freedom is that each of us shares in the shaping of his own destiny. - Richard M. Nixon, First Inaugural Address, January 20, 1969.

No man can be fully free while his neighbor is not. To go forward at all is to go forward together. - Richard M. Nixon, First Inaugural Address, January 20, 1969.

Unless we in America work to preserve freedom, there will be no freedom. - Richard M. Nixon, Second Inaugural Address, January 20, 1973.

The naive notion that we can preserve freedom by exuding goodwill is not only silly, but dangerous. The more adherents it wins, the more it tempts the aggressor. - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

Disorder and chaos are the greatest enemies of freedom today. Those who are unrealistically impatient for progress do the world a great disservice when they convulse vulnerable societies with non-negotiable demands; however pure their own intentions, the convulsion may open the door to a totalitarian regime. - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

Human rights are the very essence of a meaningful life, and human dignity is the ultimate purpose of civil government. - Henry Kissenger, lecture in New York, September 19, 1977.

The central moral problem of government has always been to strike a just and effective balance between freedom and authority. - Henry Kissenger, New York University, September 19, 1977.

On cannot make history by rewriting it. A Governments job is to find solutions to its problems, not alibi's. - Henry Kissenger, to the American Society of Newspaper editors, April 10, 1980.

It was paradoxically the emergence of popular government that expanded the scope of what authorities could demand. The People by definition could not oppress itself; hence its wishes — as expressed by elective assemblies or rulers in its name — were absolute. The growth of state power has gone hand in hand with the expansion of populist claims. - Henry Kissenger, to the Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources, July 31, 1980.

The people are fed up with government. They think it doesn’t work. And they are right. - Richard Nixon, Reader’s Digest, April 1972.

Your National Government has a great and vital role to play. And I pledge to you that where this Government should act, we will act boldly and we will lead boldly. But just as important is the role that each and every one of us must play, as an individual and as a member of his own community. - Richard M. Nixon, Second Inaugural Address, January 20, 1973.

Our system has produced and provided more freedom and more abundance, more widely shared, than any other in the history of man. - Richard M. Nixon, 2nd inaugural address, January 20, 1973.

Government enterprise is the most inefficient and costly way of producing jobs. - Richard Nixon, The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, 1978.

The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerilla wins if he does not lose. - Henry Kissenger.

In most cases, the cause that originally draws people to the guerilla organization is not love of communism but hatred of foreigners. - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

The way to fulfillment is in the use of our talents; we achieve nobility in the spirit that inspires that use. - Richard M. Nixon, First Inaugural Address, January 20, 1969.

Always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them--and then you destroy yourself. - Richard M. Nixon.

We always tend to think of historical tragedy as failing to get what we want, but if we study history we find that the worst tragedies have occurred when people got what they wanted... and it turned out to be the wrong objective. - Henry Kissenger, The Washington Quarterly. January 1978.

History is not a cookbook which gives recipes; it teaches by analogy and forces us to decide what, if anything, is analogous. History gives us a feel for the significance of events, but it does not teach which individual events are significant. It is impossible to write down a conceptual scheme and apply it mechanically to evolving situations. - Henry Kissenger, The Washington Quarterly, January 1978.

History will not do our work for us. But history tells us that we can help ourselves. - Henry Kissenger, to the American Society of Newspaper editors, April 10, 1980.

On cannot make history by rewriting it. A Governments job is to find solutions to its problems, not alibi's. - Henry Kissenger, to the American Society of Newspaper editors, April 10, 1980.

The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker. This honor now beckons America.... - Richard M. Nixon.

If we take the trouble to study it, the past is a highly visible hand pointing the directions of history. It shows the courses along which nations are propelled by their particular combinations of interests, tradition, ambition, and opportunity. It shows the directions in which the momentum of past events continues to move us today. - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

Each moment in history is a fleeting time, precious and unique. But some stand out as moments of beginning, in which courses are set that shape decades or centuries. - Richard M. Nixon, First Inaugural Address, January 20, 1969.

Throughout history many of the worst atrocities have been perpetrated in the name of the highest ideals. Passion is a poor guide to policy. - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

Our chief justices have probably had more profound and lasting influence on their times and on the direction of the nation than most presidents have had. - Richard Nixon, television address, May 21, 1969.

I deeply believe in equal justice for all Americans, whatever their station or former station. The law, whether human or divine, is no respecter of persons, but the law is a respecter of reality. - Gerald Ford, Proclamation of Pardon for Richard Nixon, September 9, 1974.

When I grow up, I want to be an honest lawyer so things like that can't happen. - A young Richard Nixon on the Teapot Dome scandal.

...the systems analysts were more often right than not; but they soon learned that the way the question is put can often predetermine an answer, and their efforts in the hallowed name of objectivity frequently wound up pushing personal preconceptions.
Misuse of the analysis apart, there was a truth which senior military officers had learned in a lifetime of service that did not lend itself to formal articulation: that power has a psychological and not only a technical component. Men can be led by statistics only up to a certain point, than more fundamental values predominate. - Henry Kissenger.

History judges leaders by the adequacy of their response, not the magnitude of the challenge. - Henry Kissenger, to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 10, 1980.

When the strongest nation in the world can be tied down for four years in a war in Vietnam with no end in sight, when the richest nation in the world can’t manage it’s own economy, when the nation with the greatest tradition of the rule of law is plagued by unprecedented racial violence, when the President of the United States cannot travel abroad or to any major city at home, Then it’s time for a new leadership for the United States of America. - Richard M. Nixon, Acceptance speech, Republican National Convention, August 1968.

Wise leadership is impossible without a sense of direction. - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

Man is the ultimate measure of all things. - Henry Kissenger, lecture a New York University, September 19, 1977.

The security of Isreal is a moral imperative for all free peoples. - Henry Kissenger. November 13, 1977.

The day will come when leaders who now denounce the Sadat initiative will be grateful that the largest of Arab nations took on its own shoulders the burden of the first and most difficult decision for peace. By solving the psychological problem, Egypt has now made it possible to overcome the other obstacles to peace everywhere in the Middle East. - Kissenger, "They Are Fated to Succeed," Time. January 2, 1978.

The difference between our goal and the Soviet goal in the Middle East is very simple but fundamental. We want peace. They want the Middle East. - Richard Nixon, The memoirs of Richard Nixon, 1978.

All intelligence services congenitally over-estimate the rationality of the decision-making process which they are analyzing. - Henry Kissenger, Brussels. September 1, 1979.

Moralizing is always easier from behind the lines than it is at the battlefront. - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

The first permanent security alliance in American history was with the democratic nations of the Atlantic community.... Cohesion rests not simply on material considerations of wealth and power but on a common moral foundation as well — on the shared conviction that the consent of the governed is the basis of government and that every individual enjoys inalienable rights and is entitled to constitutional liberties. - Henry Kissenger, speech, Conference on Eurocommunism, June 9, 1977.

I believe in building bridges but we should build only our end of the bridge. - Richard M. Nixon, speech. July 1967.

The world of today is not the world of a generation ago. Geography no longer assures security. The American nuclear monopoly has given way to nuclear balance and proliferating weapons capabilities. The United States is now as vulnerable as any other nation; indeed, nuclear weapons confront all people everywhere with a threat to their survival unknown to any previous generation. - Kissenger, lecture at New York University, September 19, 1977.

For the first time in history two nations have the capacity to inflict on each other and and on mankind a level of destruction tantamount to ending civilized life; yet they have also before them unprecedented possibilities of cooperation to harness the wonders of technology to improve the human condition. - Henry Kissenger, to Senate Foreign Relations Committee, July 31, 1979.

The side whose capacity for retaliation was vulnerable must react in a crisis in ways which would heighten the likelihood of cataclysm; a country whose strategic forces were not secure could be driven, even against its will, to strike first rather than await the opponent's attack which it would know it could not survive. - Henry Kissenger, to Senate Foreign Relations Committee, July 31, 1979.

If a nuclear power has not prepared itself to survive a nuclear war, it cannot rationally or credibly threaten the use of nuclear weapons against another nuclear power, for this could be an act of national suicide. - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

If they know that even a theoretical exchange of Soviet first-strike and American counter-strike would leave them with more surviving missile, which would then hold America's cities hostage, they would know that the American president would know this, too; and he would be paralyzed by this knowledge as the grizzly game of bluff and counter-bluff moved closer to the button-pressing point. This is the political reality behind the apparently abstract calculations of who-would-have-more-missles-left. - Richard M. Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

It is better to have made the effort and fail than to base policy on public opinion polls. Which in any event is the road to disaster. For the public will not forgive their leaders for calamities even if these occur in response to their presumed wishes. - Henry Kissenger, The Economist. February 10, 1979.

In Democracy you cannot sustain the risk of war unless your public is convinced that you are committed to peace. - Henry Kissenger, Brussels. September 1, 1979.

A democracy fights well only as long as public opinion supports the war, and public opinion will not continue to support a war that drags on without tangible signs of progress. - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

Was peace maintained by the risk of war, or because the adversary never intended aggression in the first place? - Henry Kissenger.

A just peace must be a peace which the participants accept and feel a stake in preserving. And therefore the process by which peace is made is almost as important as the final outcome. At each stage the parties must feel that it was their decision and not somebody else's that brought about the results. - Henry Kissenger. November 13, 1877.

A peace to be lasting must be founded on the self-interest of all the parties. - Henry Kissenger. November 13, 1877.

Our people have a right to expect of their government that it will explore all avenues to a genuine peace. And our allies will insist on it. - Henry Kissenger, to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. July 31, 1979.

Let us take as our goal: where peace is unknown, make it welcome; where peace is fragile, make it strong; where peace is temporary, make it permanent. - Richard M. Nixon, First Inaugural Address, January 20, 1969.

The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker. This honor now beckons America—the chance to help lead the world at last out of the valley of turmoil, and onto that high ground of peace that man has dreamed of since the dawn of civilization.
    If we succeed, generations to come will say of us now living that we mastered our moment, that we helped make the world safe for mankind.
    This is our summons to greatness.
    I believe the American people are ready to answer this call. - Richard M. Nixon, First Inaugural Address, January 20, 1969.

Other nations have much longer experience than we have in the use of power to maintain peace. But they no longer have the power. So, by default, the world looks to the United States. - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker. This honor now beckons America.... If we succeed, generations to come will say of us now living that we mastered our moment, that we helped make the world safe for mankind. This is our summons to greatness. - Richard M. Nixon, inaugural address. January 20, 1969.

For the first time, because the people of the world want peace, and the leaders of the world are afraid of war, the times are on the side of peace. - Richard M. Nixon, First Inaugural Address, January 20, 1969.

The peace we seek in the world is not the flimsy peace which is merely an interlude between wars, but a peace which can endure for generations to come. - Richard M. Nixon, Second Inaugural Address, January 20, 1973.

The essence of a strategic view is too see the interconnection of events, and the trend of events. - Henry Kissenger, to the American Society of Newspaper Editors. April 10, 1980.

Certainly Communist parties are willing to come to power by democratic means. But could they permit the democratic process to reverse what they see as the inevitable path of "historical progress"? Would they maintain the institutions--press, parties, unions, enterprises--that would represent the principal threat to their power? Would they safeguard the freedoms that could turn into instruments of their future defeat? No Communist Party that governed alone has ever done so, and the vast majority of those democratic parties which entered into coalitions with European Communists are now in the indexes of history books rather than in ministries or parliaments. - Henry Kissenger, Conference on Eurocommunism. June 9, 1977.

Bipartisanship can be a useful shield against excessive criticism. There is a natural tendency for the party in power to consider any criticism as excessive. I know these tendencies from experience, having indulged them myself. - Henry Kissenger, lecture, New York University. September 19, 1977.

The statesman is therefore like one of the heroes in classical drama who has had a vision of the future but who cannot transmit it directly to his fellow men and cannot validate its "truth." Nations learn only by experience; they "know" only when it is too late to act. - Henry Kissenger.

The problem for statesmen is that the only lessons from which they can learn are those of historical experience — and then one has to be careful not to assume that they are identical. - Henry Kissenger, Der Spiegel. July 1978.

A statesman must act on judgements about the future that cannot be proved true when they are made. When the scope for action is greatest, the knowledge on which to base such action is often least; when certain knowledge is at hand, the scope for creative action has often disappeared. - Henry Kissenger, to the American Society of Newspaper Editors. April 10, 1980.

In these difficult years America has suffered from a fever of words; from inflated rhetoric that promises more than it can deliver; from angry rhetoric that fans discontents into hatreds; from bombastic rhetoric that postures instead of persuading.
We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at each other--until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices. - Richard Nixon, 1st inaugural address. January 20, 1969.

Intelligence is not all that important in the exercise of power, and is often, in point of fact, useless. - Henry Kissenger. Esquire. June 1975.

Power can be used only as an instrument of policy if you are prepared to be moderate in the political consequences you draw from it — and if you respect the right and existence of other states. - Henry Kissenger, Der Spiegel. July 78.

If a balance of power become an end in itself it becomes self-destruction. - Henry Kissenger, The Washington Quarterly, January, 1979.

In my view the Chinese have survived for 3,000 years by being the most unsentimental practitioners of the balance of power, the most sophisticated, and the ones most free of illusion. - Henry Kissenger, Brussels. September 1, 1979.

Contrary to popular belief, a policy based on pure balance of power is the most difficult foreign policy to conduct. It requires first of all, a constantly correct assessment of the elements of power. Secondly, it demands a total ruthlessness and means that statesmen must be able to ignore friendship, loyalty, and anything other than the national interest. Third, it requires a domestic structure that will tolerate if not support this strategy. Fourth, it requires the absence of both permanent friends and permanent enemies, because as soon as a permanent enemy exists, freedom of maneuver is immediately reduced. - Henry Kissenger, The Washington Quarterly. January, 1979.

We cannot avoid the responsibilities that our power and principles confer upon us. Abdication will not purify us; it only creates a vacuum that will send to their destruction those who rely on us. At some point prudence turns to weakness, which tempts danger; the ostentatious renunciation of force has the paradoxical consequence of magnifying risks. - Henry Kissenger, to the American Society of Newspaper Editors. April 10, 1980.

Either we act like a great power or we will be reduced to a minor power, and thus reduced we will not survive – nor will freedom or Western values survive. - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

A coherent public policy must address with equal insight the requirements of security and the management of the economic system. Thus the future of American business will require the highest degree of sensitivity to the political framework in which it functions and to the great coming changes in the world political process. - Henry Kissenger, address at Georgetown University. June 28, 1977.

It is not a question of balancing the insistence of conservatives for higher defense with the considerations of liberals for a reduction in our military spending. The issue is what our country needs for its long-term security. - Henry Kissenger, to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. July 31, 1979.

At home, the shift from old policies to new will not be a retreat from our responsibilities, but a better way to progress. - Richard M. Nixon, Second Inaugural Address, January 20, 1973.

If you put a loose cannon on a deck, you cannot then say you are not responsible when it starts rolling because you didn't predict the particular wave which caused it to roll. - Henry Kissenger, Der Spiegel, July, 1978.

Nobody can avoid the responsibility for a rock slide when he throws a rock down a stony hillside, just because the rock that finally kills somebody is not the rock he threw. - Henry Kissenger, remarks, January 31, 1980.

A person can be expected to act responsibly only if he has responsibility. This is human nature. So let us encourage individuals at home and nations abroad to do more for themselves, to decide more for themselves. Let us locate responsibility in more places. Let us measure what we will do for others by what they will do for themselves. - Richard M. Nixon, Second Inaugural Address, January 20, 1973.

The American so-called progressive consensus deals with almost every political crisis abroad by proposing a coalition government.... What makes this faith in coalition government so incongruous is that we never practice it at home.... Yet in revolutionary situations the United States persistently proposes such a solution to factions who are killing each other in the street precisely because they cannot agree on the minimum necessities for a political contest. To the extent that such a proposal is taken seriously, it will be interpreted either as a clever tactic to undermine the existing government, or as an example of total irrelevance to the real issues. - Henry Kissenger, The Economist, February 10, 1979.

The fundamental challenge of a revolution is this: certainly wise governments forestall revolutions by making timely concessions; indeed the very wisest governments do not consider adaptations as concessions, but rather as part of a natural process of increasing popular support. However, once a revolution is in train it cannot then be moderated by concessions. Once a revolution has occured, the preeminent requirement is the restoration of authority. - Henry Kissenger, The Economist, February 10, 1979.

Precisely because human rights advocacy is a powerful political weapon, we must be careful that in its application we do not erode all moral dividing lines. - Henry Kissenger, lecture at New York University. September 19, 1977.

To be sure, the advocacy of human rights has in itself a political and even strategic significance. But in the final reckoning more than advocacy will be counted. If we universalize our human rights policy, applying it indiscriminately and literally to all countries, we run the risk of becoming the world's policeman — an objective the American people may not support. - Henry Kissenger, lecture at New York University, September 19, 1977.

In throwing wide the horizons of space, we have discovered new horizons on earth.- Richard M. Nixon, First Inaugural Address, January 20, 1969.

What the United States wants for South Vietnam is not the important thing. What North Vietnam wants for South Vietnam is not the Important thing. What is important is what the people of South Vietnam want for South Vietnam. - Richard M. Nixon.

Societies that try to avoid difficult choices by making comforting assumptions about the future win no awards for restraint; they only speed their own demise. - Henry Kissenger, Conference on Eurocommunism. June 9, 1977.

Just as we respect the right of each nation to determine its own future, we also recognize the responsibility of each nation to secure its own future. - Richard M. Nixon, Second Inaugural Address, January 20, 1973.

Success is not a harbor but a voyage with its own perils to the spirit. The game of life is to come up a winner, to be a success, or to achieve what we set out to do. Yet there is always the danger of failing as a human being. The lesson that most of us on this voyage never learn, but can never quite forget, is that to win is sometimes to lose. - Richard Nixon.

I was a lousy football player, but I remember Chief Newman, our coach, saying that “There’s one thing about Nixon, he plays every scrimmage as though the championship were at stake. - Richard Nixon, Saturday Evening Post. July 12, 1958.

We found that in general the women judges and lawyers qualified to be nominated for the Supreme Court were too liberal to meet the strict constructionist criterion I had established. - Richard M. Nixon, The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, 1978.

When terrorists or guerrillas mark society, the government is tempted into acts of repression which undermine its authority, and the chaos polarizes the society so that the premise of the democratic process — that the loser accepts his defeat and in return is given an opportunity to win on another occasion — cannot be realized. The victims of terrorist attacks are often the ablest and most dedicated officials, leaving in place the corrupt whose transgressions multiply as they attempt to compensate for the peril of their station by accumulating the maximum material benefits. - Henry Kissenger, to the Senate. July 31, 1980.

An international fraternity of terrorists, with the Soviet Union as the chairman of the rush committee, has enabled the Russians to engage, as Senator Henry Jackson has put it, in “warfare by remote control” all over the world. Other members of the international club include North Korea, Cuba, South Yemen, East Germany, Libya, and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Malcontents from all over the world are trained by them – in the arts of kidnapping, assassination, sabotage, bomb making, and insurrection, and then sent off to ply their trade. Their tutors are careful to keep them well supplied with weapons and to provide sanctuary when they need it. - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

In the contemporary world it is the totalitarian systems which have managed the most systematic and massive repression of the rights of men. - Henry Kissenger, lecture at New York University. September 19, 1977.

We shall respect our treaty commitments. - Richard M. Nixon, Second Inaugural Address, January 20, 1973.

There is a crucial difference between managing conflict with adversaries and maintaining an alliance among friends. - Henry Kissenger, conference on eurocommunism. June 9, 1977.

We must bear in mind that it is better to have no agreement than to have a bad agreement. - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

I seek the Presidency not because it offers me a chance to be somebody but because it offers a chance to do something. - Richard M. Nixon.

I have never been a quiter, to leave office before my term is completed is opposed to every instinct in my body. But as President, I must put the interests of America first. America needs a full-time president. - Richard M. Nixon.

I let down my friends, I let down my country, I let down our system of government. - Richard M. Nixon.

Vietnam was a catharsis. It taught us that our power while great is finite, that our influence though crucial can be effective only if we understand our priorities and the world in which we live. - Henry Kissenger, lecture, New York Universtiy, September 19, 1977.

In essence, the final climactic battle at the end of a struggle that had been going on for twenty five years was decided in favor of the communists because when the chips were down, the Soviet Union stood by its allies and the United States failed to do so. As I stated in 1972, “All the power in the world lodged in the United States means nothing... Unless there is some assurance, some confidence, some trust that the United States will be credible, will be dependable.” - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

More nuclear power in our arsenal would not have saved Vietnam. More U.S. Conventional forces would not have saved Vietnam. Vietnam was lost, not because of a lack of power, but because of a failure of skill and determination at using power. These failures casued a breach in public trust and led to a collapse of our national will. - Richard Nixon, The Real War, 1980.

Violence... drive many to support Communism in desperation, convinced that drastic remedies are required to end a state of siege. - Henry Kissenger, Conference on Eurocommunism, June, 1977.

The American approach to war has always been that war and peace are discrete elements of policy: that you fight a war, you defeat your enemy, and then you make peace and live happily ever after. - Henry Kissenger, The Washington Quarterly. January, 1978.

In the final analysis the military profession is the art of prevailing.... - Henry Kissenger.

No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time. - Henry Kissenger.

The Great society was created by liberal academics and bureaucrats steeped in the myths of the New Deal. When its theoretical high-mindedness ran up against the self-interested tough-mindedness of the people it was intended to serve, there was certain to be conflict. - Richard Nixon, The Memoirs of Richard Nixon. 1978.

SW I'm doing a new Baba WAWA Inteview Espeshewy for You...Tune in to Twentee twentee...Cue sound...321yer...on!

Hewo Good evening...I'm Baba WAWA and this is Twentee twentee...We have a vewy vewy special guest this evening..a bwave huntew and Tewwowism Expewt...Mistew Elmew Fudd exwoosivy fwom Wonnew Bwothews...Elmew, How do you feew about these Tewwowists?

Well BABA I'm onwee a simpew Hunter HEHEHEHE...But I think These Wahhabis shouwd be hunted down wike They Were Wascawy Wabbits!

Elmew, What do you think of Henwy Kissingews view that the Wahabbi Tewwowists should be treated as civiwized peepew...

BABA...I must say, for the wecowd that ...wait for it

Henwee Kissingew is nothing but a vewwy vewwwy fat wowwy powwy dipwomat! </ r substitution charstrng w>

Sounds like he is describing the Leftist approach to terrorism...

Special Fox News report...Off Camera Live mike recording of Barbara Walters has been played on broadcast and Internet News...Word is she is facing severe disciplinary action for statements she made following a heated debate with WB Political Analyst and Game Warden...Elmer Fudd...Transcript of the Controversial tape below:

Are We Off? That was WEEWY Excwewsheeating!!!...

Weewwy Elmew!!!...Fow a Tewevision Pewsonawity, your Accent is awmowst unintewwwidgeabew!!!...Have yew considewed a speech Thewapist? As a pubwic figew...You have a duty to your pubwic...You should be wepwimanded fow iwwesponsibew pubwic Speaking! You wiww nevew wowk in Howwywood again I assew you!!! Scwooh yooh and that widikewous wabbit stwait man!!!

If the desire to conciliate becomes the sole operational basis of policy, we run the risk that the threat of war will become a weapon of blackmail;

Sounds like our policy regarding Palestine, Pakistan and SaudiArabia.

Blame this one on sleaveless! He just had to go and make a Kissinger Joke!

Courtroom scene...familiar character in red flannel hat and muddy boots approaches the bench to address the court...

Hewwo yow Honew! HEHEHEHE!...Pweese dismiss the diskwimminatowy cwaims made by the pwosecution...My Cwient denies the charges Categowickwy! Wet the wecowd show he bashed mr. Kissengew as often as any othew imaginawy chawactews in his unbawanced mind and is innocent of evewy charge of swander!!!

ER uh, Thanks doc, crunch crunch...funny thing me being a judge and all, {munch munch} swallows...I gotta recuse myself, y'see, doc? boy! crunch crunch {sprays the desk] good carrot!...

Wait for it...

to be poifectly honest? I never studied Law! ZZZZIP Wig floating to the ground in parallel with judicial robes recently vacated by the Wascawiest Wabbit in da West...Fade to pinhole...Peace out psyops!!! BR SS

I caught Wawa on the view one morning expressing her admiration for Fidel's magnetic personality and when asked by another panelist, saying yes, she'd have slept with him if asked.

Well Fidel? do you want a piece of WAWA?

I'll give you a sCUBA snack!

Rooh? REE??? RUHUH!!!! REEHEEHEEHEE...

NEVER bet against Psyops...Freeper BRICK!!!

PO, My "W" key sure is tired from all that r substitution...I wonder if any of the slime ball Sore Loser unemployed Clintonistas kept the Keys they STOLE from the WHITE HOUSE!!! On second thought...I wouldn't want anything used by those untermenschen...it probably has blood on it from something that TRAITOR authorized.

Echschs42 wasss Jussht Dessspickable!!!

EEEW!!! Psyops you got any keyboard cleaner...I just gave my computer the weather instead of the news;-D

I just gave my computer the weather instead of the news;-D

You gotta be careful with those Fudd impersonations! Imagine if you had been impersonating Sylvester! (I hear that club soda is the all purpose cleaner, but i've never tried it on a keyboard).

Yeah poor Ssylvesther! I shudder to think!

On the Martian side...I've decided that the highest rank besides myself at the colony will be First Brick...That's you!!! I just like the sound of it...Tony Blair met with Martian First Brick Psyops today about joint tactical operations in the rings of Saturn...

What do you get when you shoot a brick? Two Bricks! Can you trust a brick??? How many people have put their lives in the care of a Brick Building today??? If you need to you can toss a brick through a window...squash a spider, hold a door open...First BRICK...And you know the cool thing is MARS is RED!!! hehehe... I'm brewin up a colony kids...Watch APOD DAILY!!! Brick also has the gift of silence...How would you like to be called First Counselor psyops...Yech...Talk on cue...Palace intrigue...Who needs it...When you visit New Freepia's government in session...We're going to be a WALL of...well BRICKS!!! GOD HELP the Foreign nation that should unbalance our peacefull resolve...Humpty Dumpty HUSSEIN... Even the DUKE used bricks in True Grit...You'd better not cross me or you'll think a wagon of Bricks fell on you!!!From MARS, BABY...

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