World Order Quotes

“In Europe, a system of order had been founded on the careful sequestration of moral absolutes from political endeavors—if only because attempts to impose one faith or system of morality on the Continent’s diverse peoples had ended so disastrously. In America, the proselytizing spirit was infused with an ingrained distrust of established institutions and hierarchies. Thus the British philosopher and Member of Parliament Edmund Burke would recall to his colleagues that the colonists had exported “liberty according to English ideas” along with diverse dissenting religious sects constrained in Europe (“the protestantism of the protestant religion”) and “agreeing in nothing but in the communion of the spirit of liberty.” These forces, intermingling across an ocean, had produced a distinct national outlook: “In this character of the Americans, a love of freedom is the predominating feature which marks and distinguishes the whole.”
― Henry Kissinger, World Order

“Three conclusions emerge from Richelieu’s career. First, the indispensable element of a successful foreign policy is a long-term strategic concept based on a careful analysis of all relevant factors. Second, the statesman must distill that vision by analyzing and shaping an array of ambiguous, often conflicting pressures into a coherent and purposeful direction. He (or she) must know where this strategy is leading and why. And, third, he must act at the outer edge of the possible, bridging the gap between his society’s experiences and its aspirations. Because repetition of the familiar leads to stagnation, no little daring is required.”
― Henry Kissinger, World Order

“The ability to enable people to gather in a square differs from building new institutions of state.”
― Henry Kissinger, World Order

“World order cannot be achieved by any one country acting alone. To achieve a genuine world order, its components, while maintaining their own values, need to acquire a second culture that is global, structural, and juridical—a concept of order that transcends the perspective and ideals of any one region or nation.”
― Henry Kissinger, World Order

“Foreign policy is in danger of turning into a subdivision of domestic politics instead of an exercise in shaping the future.”
― Henry Kissinger, World Order

“In conflict situations, social networking may serve as a platform to reinforce traditional social fissures as much as it dispels them. The widespread sharing of videotaped atrocities in the Syrian civil war appears to have done more to harden the resolve of the warring parties than to stop the killing, while the notorious ISIL has used social media to declare a caliphate and exhort holy war.”
― Henry Kissinger, World Order

“The pursuit of transparency and connectivity in all aspects of existence, by destroying privacy, inhibits the development of personalities with the strength to take lonely decisions.”
― Henry Kissinger, World Order

“Every age has its leitmotif, a set of beliefs that explains the universe, that inspires or consoles the individual by providing an explanation for the multiplicity of events impinging on him. In the medieval period, it was religion; in the Enlightenment, it was Reason; in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it was nationalism combined with a view of history as a motivating force. Science and technology are the governing concepts of our age.”
― Henry Kissinger, World Order

“Letting Stalin lead Mao into authorizing the Korean War was the only strategic mistake Mao ever made because, in the end, the Korean War delayed Chinese unification by a century in that it led to America’s commitment to Taiwan.”
― Henry Kissinger, World Order

“American approach to policy is pragmatic; China’s is conceptual. America has never had a powerful threatening neighbor; China has never been without a powerful adversary on its borders. Americans hold that every problem has a solution; Chinese think that each solution is an admission ticket to a new set of problems. Americans seek an outcome responding to immediate circumstances; Chinese concentrate on evolutionary change.”
― Henry Kissinger, World Order

“China, until the modern age, imposed its own matrix of customs and culture on invaders so successfully that they grew indistinguishable from the Chinese people. By contrast, India transcended foreigners not by converting them to Indian religion or culture but by treating their ambitions with supreme equanimity; it integrated their achievements and their diverse doctrines into the fabric of Indian life without ever professing to be especially awed by any of them.”
― Henry Kissinger, World Order

“As “the East,” it has never been clearly parallel to “the West.” There has been no common religion, not even one splintered into different branches as is Christianity in the West. Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity all thrive in different parts of Asia.”
― Henry Kissinger, World Order

“As nuclear weapons spread into more and more hands, the calculus of deterrence grows increasingly ephemeral and deterrence less and less reliable. In a widely proliferated world, it becomes ever more difficult to decide who is deterring whom and by what calculations.”
― Henry Kissinger, World Order

“The Middle East is caught in a confrontation akin to—but broader than—Europe’s pre-Westphalian wars of religion. Domestic and international conflicts reinforce each other. Political, sectarian, tribal, territorial, ideological, and traditional national-interest disputes merge. Religion is “weaponized” in the service of geopolitical objectives; civilians are marked for extermination based on their sectarian affiliation.”
― Henry Kissinger, World Order

“In every era, humanity produces demonic individuals and seductive ideas of repression. The task of statesmanship is to prevent their rise to power and sustain an international order capable of deterring them if they do achieve it. The interwar years’ toxic mixture of facile pacifism, geopolitical imbalance, and allied disunity allowed these forces a free hand.”
― Henry Kissinger, World Order

“Quanto à questão da necessidade de derrubar a ordem mundial vigente, islamitas de ambos os lados da trincheira – sunitas e xiitas – estão geralmente de acordo.”
― Henry Kissinger, A Ordem Mundial

“Quando os Estados não são governados em toda a sua extensão é a própria ordem internacional ou regional que começa a desintegrar-se.”
― Henry Kissinger, A Ordem Mundial

“É a pureza, e não a estabilidade, o princípio fundador desta conceção de ordem mundial.”
― Henry Kissinger, A Ordem Mundial

“as políticas europeias consagram um modelo de tolerância e de inclusão que chega a assumir contornos de falta de vontade para afirmar os valores caracteristicamente europeus.”
― Henry Kissinger, A Ordem Mundial

“O mundo que despontava com a Guerra Fria ia assentar os seus equilíbrios na conduta e no armamento de duas superpotências: os Estados Unidos, além Atlântico, e a União Soviética,”
― Henry Kissinger, A Ordem Mundial

“E veio demonstrar como mudanças internas podem abalar o equilíbrio internacional mais profundamente do que uma agressão externa – uma lição que seria aplicada pelas revoluções do século XX, muitas das quais beberam explicitamente dos conceitos originalmente avançados pela Revolução Francesa.”
― Henry Kissinger, A Ordem Mundial

“Revolução Francesa, que proclamou uma ordem interna e mundial tão radicalmente diferente quanto possível do sistema vestefaliano”
― Henry Kissinger, A Ordem Mundial

“o equilíbrio de poder precisa de ser reavaliado de tempos a tempos. É ele que desencadeia as guerras cuja dimensão limita.”
― Henry Kissinger, A Ordem Mundial

“Porque a mera repetição do que é familiar conduz à estagnação, não é pouca a audácia exigida.”
― Henry Kissinger, A Ordem Mundial

“elemento indispensável do sucesso de uma política externa é uma estratégia de longo prazo fundada numa análise rigorosa de todos os fatores relevantes.”
― Henry Kissinger, A Ordem Mundial

“Em período de convulsões generalizadas, um país onde seja preservada a autoridade doméstica fica em boa posição para explorar o caos dos Estados vizinhos em benefício de objetivos internacionais mais elevados.”
― Henry Kissinger, A Ordem Mundial

“um conjunto de regras de aceitação geral que define os limites de ação aceitáveis, e um equilíbrio de poder que impõe a contenção quando as regras são violadas, impedindo que determinada unidade política venha a subjugar as outras.”
― Henry Kissinger, A Ordem Mundial

“a ordem sem liberdade, ainda que alicerçada numa exaltação momentânea, acaba por gerar os seus próprios anticorpos; mas a liberdade não pode ser garantida nem preservada sem uma moldura de ordem que preserve a paz.”
― Henry Kissinger, A Ordem Mundial

“Europa propôs-se abandonar o sistema de Estados que concebeu e transcendê-lo mediante um conceito de soberania partilhada. Ironicamente, e embora tenha sido ela a inventar o conceito de equilíbrio de poder, é a Europa que vem limitando, substancial e intencionalmente, o elemento de poder nas suas novas instituições. Tendo reduzido o seu poderio militar, a Europa tem pouca capacidade de resposta perante a violação de normas universais.”
― Henry Kissinger, A Ordem Mundial

“É que a visão americana assentava não na adoção do sistema europeu de equilíbrio de poder, mas na expansão dos princípios democráticos, de que resultaria o triunfo da paz.”
― Henry Kissinger, A Ordem Mundial