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.
What the public wants is the image of passion, not passion itself.
A cat won't curry favor even if it's in their best interests to do so. A cat can't be a hypocrite. If more preachers were like cats, this would be a more religious country.
I will tell you what is my overriding perception of the last twenty years: that we are a civilization careening toward a succession of anticlimaxes β toward an infinity of unsatisfying, and disagreeable endings.
In the life of a man, his time is but a moment, his being an incessant flux, his sense a dim rushlight, his body a prey of worms, his soul an unquiet eddy, his fortune dark, his fame doubtful. In short, all that is body is as coursing waters, all that is of the soul as dreams and vapors.
Attempts to defend amusement parks and circuses on the grounds that they 'educate' people about animals should not be taken seriously. Such enterprises are part of the commercial entertainment industry. The most important lesson they teach impressionable young minds is that it is acceptable to keep animals in captivity for human amusement.
We ... must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.