In his essay, ‘Perpetual Peace,’ the philosopher, Immanuel Kant, argued that perpetual peace would eventually come to the world in one of two ways, by human insight or by conflicts and catastrophes of a magnitude that left humanity no other choice. We are at such a juncture.
Interpretation
Kissinger reflects on the potential paths to achieving lasting peace in the world.
In this quote, Henry A. Kissinger references Immanuel Kant's notion that true and lasting peace may be achieved either through human wisdom and understanding or through severe conflicts that ultimately force humanity to change its ways. Kissinger suggests that the world may be at a crucial point where its future, especially regarding peace, hangs in the balance due to significant challenges and conflicts faced today.
In practice
In a speech about global diplomacy, one might say, 'As we navigate today's challenges, we must remember that, as Kant suggested, peace may only come through insight or through the harsh lessons of conflict.'
Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed. History is a tale of efforts that failed, or aspirations that weren’t 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.
The death of a single human being is too heavy a price for the vindication of any principle, however sacred.
There are people who say, 'Oh this guy is quite thick.' I think the reason is that, increasingly, I don't mind being simple in terms of literary expression. Others say, 'No, no, no. He went to Cambridge. He got a good degree. He must be Einstein.'
We can have wilderness without freedom; we can have wilderness without human life at all, but we cannot have freedom without wilderness, we cannot have freedom without leagues of open space beyond the cities, where boys and girls, men and women, can live at least part of their lives under no control but their own desires and abilities, free from any and all direct administration by their fellow men.
I think this is how we are supposed to be in the world-present and in awe.
Independence can be trusted nowhere but with the people in mass. They are inherently independent of all but moral law.
Nobody ever completely means what they say. Even when they think they're telling the truth, there's always something hidden behind their words.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.