A country that demands moral perfection in its foreign policy will achieve neither perfection nor security.
Interpretation
Moral perfection in foreign policy is unattainable and can lead to neither safety nor idealism.
Henry Kissinger's quote suggests that striving for absolute moral perfection in the realm of foreign policy is unrealistic and counterproductive. Rather than achieving a flawless or secure outcome, such an approach can lead to failures and vulnerabilities, as the complexities of international relations often require pragmatic, rather than purely idealistic, decisions.
In practice
A speaker at a political conference discussing the complexities of international relations.
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.
Eventually everything connects - people, ideas, objects. The quality of the connections is the key to quality per se.
I love Sufism as I love beautiful poetry, but it is not the answer. Sufism is like a mirage in the desert. It says to you, come and sit, relax and enjoy yourself for a while.
Each generation has its own rendezvous with the land, for despite our fee titles and claims of ownership, we are all brief tenants on this planet. By choice, or by default, we will carve out a land legacy for our heirs.
Sometimes he did not know if he slept or just thought about sleep.
Indians do not hinder the progress of their dead by embalming or tight coffining. When the spirit has gone they give the body back to the earth. the earth welcomes the body-coaxes new life and beauty from it, hurries over what men shudder at. Lovely tender herbage bursts from the graves, swiftly, exulting over corruption.
Heaven is blest with perfect rest, but the blessing of Earth is toil.
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