If I should ever be captured, I want no negotiation - and if I should request a negotiation from captivity they should consider that a sign of duress.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of integrity and unwavering principles, even in moments of vulnerability.
Henry A. Kissinger's quote highlights the idea that, in the face of captivity or adversity, one should remain steadfast in their principles and not compromise on their values. It suggests that any request for negotiation under duress should not be taken as a genuine willingness to negotiate, but rather as a sign of coercion, emphasizing the need to maintain one's integrity even in challenging situations.
In practice
During a speech on human rights, to illustrate the importance of standing firm in one's beliefs even under pressure.
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.
Who would have thought it would be possible to run across Canada on one leg, eh? I wanted to try the impossible and show that it could be done.
My spirit tells me I cannot be silent.
The sea is dangerous and its storms terrible, but these obstacles have never been sufficient reason to remain ashore...unlike the mediocre, intrepid spirits seek victory over those things that seem impossible...it is with an iron will that they embark on the most daring of all endeavors...to meet the shadowy future without fear and conquer the unknown.
Luke warm people are continually concerned with playing it safe; they are slaves to the god of control. This focus on safe living keeps them from sacrificing and risking for God.
I was a queen, and you took away my crown; a wife, and you killed my husband; a mother, and you deprived me of my children. My blood alone remains: take it, but do not make me suffer long.
I've still got to do something to help, however tiny it is. I always think of the old Hebrew saying, which is translated roughly into, 'He who saves one life saves the world,' because it's pretty ghastly to think of all the people we're not saving.
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