The White House Years Quotes

“In Washington...the appearance of power is therefore almost as important as the reality of it. In fact, the appearance is frequently its essential reality”
― Henry Kissinger, The White House Years

“Politicians are like dogs... Their life expectancy is too short for a commitment to be bearable”
― Henry Kissinger, The White House Years

“the convictions that leaders have formed before reaching high office are the intellectual capital they will consume as long as they continue in office. There is little time for leaders to reflect. They are locked in an endless battle in which the urgent constantly gains on the important. The public life of every political figure is a continual struggle to rescue an element of choice from the pressure of circumstance. When”
― Henry Kissinger, White House Years: The First Volume of His Classic Memoirs

“The consensus that had sustained our postwar foreign policy had evaporated. The men and women who had sustained our international commitments and achievements were demoralized by what they considered their failure in Vietnam. Too many of our young were in rebellion against the successes of their fathers, attacking what they claimed to be the overextension of our commitments and mocking the values that had animated the achievements. A new isolationism was growing. Whereas in the 1920s we had withdrawn from the world because we thought we were too good for it, the insidious theme of the late 1960s was that we should withdraw from the world because we were too evil for it. Not”
― Henry Kissinger, White House Years: The First Volume of His Classic Memoirs

“If history teaches anything it is that there can be no peace without equilibrium and no justice without restraint.”
― Henry Kissinger, White House Years: The First Volume of His Classic Memoirs

“Later I learned to improve my forecasting—if necessary by asking the visitor in advance what subjects he intended to raise with Nixon. In”
― Henry Kissinger, White House Years: The First Volume of His Classic Memoirs