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.
See the brotherhood of all mankind as the highest order of Yogis; conquer your own mind, and conquer the world.
We the Living is not a novel 'about Soviet Russia.' It is a novel about Man against the State. Its basic theme is the sanctity of human life - using the word 'sanctity' not in a mystical sense, but in the sense of 'supreme value.'
For when they see the people swarm into the streets, and daily wet to the skin with rain, and yet cannot persuade them to go out of the rain, they do keep themselves within their houses, seeing they cannot remedy the folly of the people.
We all have thoughts and feelings that we believe are fundamental to our lives but that are better left unspoken.
I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.
It seems that the right of freedom of speech that was enshrined in numerous constitutions is now under attack by religious institutions.
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