America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that relationships between countries are based on changing interests rather than fixed alliances or enmities.
Henry A. Kissinger's quote emphasizes the transient nature of international relations, highlighting that nations prioritize their interests over personal loyalties or long-standing partnerships. This perspective implies that alliances and conflicts are subject to change, depending on the evolving needs and strategies of the countries involved, indicating a pragmatic approach to diplomacy and foreign policy.
In practice
In a discussion about foreign policy at a conference.
Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed. History is a tale of efforts that failed, or aspirations that werenβt realized. So, as a historian, one has to live with a sense of the inevitability of tragedy.
Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.
It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise.
The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.
If peace is equated simply with the absence of war, it can become abject pacifism that turns the world over to the most ruthless.
What political leaders decide, intelligence services tend to seek to justify.
Through Hinduism, I feel a better person. I just get happier and happier. I now feel that I am unlimited, and I am more in control of my own physical body. The thing is, you go to an ordinary church and it's a nice feeling. They tell you all about God, but they don't show you how the way. They don't show you how to become Christ-concious yourself. Hinduism, however, is different.
How is it possible not to feel that there is communication between our solitude as a dreamer and the solitudes of childhood? And it is no accident that, in a tranquil reverie, we often follow the slope which returns us to our childhood solitudes.
The very good people didn't convince me; I felt they'd never been tempted. But you knew; you understood; you had felt the world outside tugging at one with all its golden hands β and yet you hated the things it asks of one; you hated happiness bought by disloyalty and cruelty and indifference.
Equal means getting the same thing, at the same time and in the same place.
But her brain was not interested in the future. Loaded with the past and hungry for more, it left her no room to imagine, let alone plan for, the next day.
The rich in spirit help the poor in one grand brotherhood, all having the same Principle, or Father; and blessed is that man who seeth his brother's need and supplieth it, seeking his own in another's good.
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