Henry Kissinger

Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes, too much fraternizing with the enemy

Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.

The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.

A leader who confines his role to his people's experience dooms himself to stagnation; a leader who outstrips his people's experience runs the risk of not being understood.

I would be amazed if a three-day campaign made a decisive difference," "[W]e did not do, in my view, enough damage to degrade it [Iraq's programs for weapons of mass destruction] for six months. It doesn't make any significant difference because in six months to a year they will be back to where they are and we cannot keep repeating these attacks. [. . .] At the end of the day what will be decisive is what the situation in the Middle East will be two to three years from now. If Saddam is still there, if he's rearming, if the sanctions are lifted, we will have lost, no matter what spin we put on it

(in response to the Clinton Administrations missle attacks on Iraq in 1998)

University politics make me long for the simplicity of the Middle East.

It is, after all, the responsibility of the expert to operate the familiar and that of the leader to transcend it.

The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.

Moderation is a virtue only in those who are thought to have an alternative.

Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.