No foreign policy - no matter how ingenious - has any chance of success if it is born in the minds of a few and carried in the hearts of none.
Interpretation
Successful foreign policy requires widespread support and participation, not just clever ideas from a few individuals.
In this quote, Henry A. Kissinger emphasizes that even the most brilliant foreign policy strategies are doomed to fail if they are not supported by the broader populace. It highlights the importance of inclusivity and shared responsibility in governance, suggesting that successful policy must resonate with the hearts and minds of the many, not just be the product of elite thinkers.
In practice
During a speech on international relations, one might use this quote to emphasize the need for public engagement.
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.
Ours is a fully democratic government, which in our language we call a people's government.
A government which lays taxes on the people not required by urgent public necessity and sound public policy is not a protector of liberty, but an instrument of tyranny. It condemns the citizen to servitude.
As someone who worked hard for a Labour victory in the 90s, do I regret it? Not really. It was bound to happen. And it'll happen with the next government, and the one after it. Because all governments serve us. They serve the filth.
It has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.
Now that the House of Commons is trying to become useful, it does a great deal of harm.
The accords were fig leaves of democratic procedure to hide the nakedness of Stalinist dictatorship.
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