Tradition matters because it is not given to societies to proceed through history as if they had no past and as if every course of action were available to them. they may deviate from the previous trajectory only within a finite margin. the great statesmen act at the outer limit of that margin. if they fall short, society stagnates. if they exceed it, they lose the capacity to shape posterity.

— Henry Kissinger

Henry Kissinger Quotes

The governments on both sides remained committed to the need for cooperation, but they could not control all the ways the countries impinged on each other. It is the unsolved challenge of Chinese-American relations.

— Henry Kissinger

China does not want revolution; it does not want war or revenge; it simply wants the Chinese people to “bid farewell to poverty and enjoy a better life” and for China to become – in contrast to the taunting rejectionism of Mao – “the most responsible, the most civilized, and the most law abiding and orderly member of the international community.”32.

— Henry Kissinger

The study of history offers no manual of instructions that can be applied automatically; history teaches by analogy, shedding light on the likely consequences of comparable situations.

— Henry Kissinger

A great president must be an educator, bridging the gap between his people’s future and its experience.

— Henry Kissinger

What Nixon sought throughout the Cold War was a stable international order for a world filled with nuclear weapons.

— Henry Kissinger

China as the present-day economic superpower is the legacy of Deng Xiaoping.

— Henry Kissinger

AI can also be used defensively, locating and repairing flaws before they are exploited. But since the attacker can choose the target, AI gives the party on offense an inherent if not insuperable advantage.

— Henry Kissinger

It entered into a Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance with North Korea in 1961, containing a clause on mutual defense against outside attack that is still in force at this writing. But that was more in the nature of the tributary relationship familiar from Chinese history: Beijing offered protection; North Korean reciprocity was irrelevant to the relationship. The Soviet alliance frayed from the very outset largely because Mao would not accept even the hint of subordination.

— Henry Kissinger

Good character does not assure worldly success, or triumph in statecraft, but it does provide firm grounding in victory and consolation in failure.

— Henry Kissinger

Rather than clear outcomes, however, we are more likely to arrive at a series of dilemmas with imperfect answers.

— Henry Kissinger

In other words, each side could arm itself with whatever ideological slogans fulfilled its own domestic necessities, so long as it did not let them interfere with the need for cooperation against the Soviet danger. Ideology would be relegated to domestic management; it took a leave from foreign policy. The ideological armistice was, of course, valid only so long as objectives remained compatible.

— Henry Kissinger

Almost as if according to some natural law, in every century there seems to emerge a country with the power, the will, and the intellectual and moral impetus to shape the entire international system in accordance with its own values.

— Henry Kissinger

What degree of inferiority would remain meaningful in a crisis in which each side used its capabilities to the fullest?

— Henry Kissinger

To understand a man,’ Napoleon is said to have observed, ‘look at the world when he was twenty.’ Thatcher had turned twenty in 1945.

— Henry Kissinger

Relations between China and the United States need not – and should not – become a zero-sum game... Key issues on the international front are global in nature. Consensus may prove difficult, but confronation on these issues is self-defeating.

— Henry Kissinger

AI’s brittleness is a reflection of the shallowness of what it learns.

— Henry Kissinger

App developers often rush programs to market, correcting flaws in real time, while aerospace companies do the opposite: test their jets religiously before a single customer ever sets foot.

— Henry Kissinger

Viewed through the lens of deterrence, seeming weakness could have the same consequences as an actual deficiency;.

— Henry Kissinger

With data and computing requirements limiting the development of more advanced AI, devising training methods that use less data and less computer power is a critical frontier.

— Henry Kissinger

At the end of my November 1973 visit, I suggested to Zhou a hotline between Washington and Beijing as part of an agreement on reducing the risks of accidental war.

— Henry Kissinger
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