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.
Lots of Orthodox go to church every Sunday but don't know much about the faith. Yet they know that there is something that they don't know much about.
The United States have adventured upon a great and noble experiment, which is believed to have been hazarded in the absence of all previous precedent - that of total separation of Church and State. No religious establishment by law exists among us. The conscience is left free from all restraint and each is permitted to worship his Maker after his own judgement.
A woman has a right to an abortion. That's a decision that's up to the pregnant woman, not up to the pope or some do-gooders or the Religious Right.
Keep things at arm's length... If you let anything come too near you want to hold on to it. And there is nothing a man can hold on to.
Old age is a tyrant, who forbids, under pain of death, the pleasures of youth.
Your belief in God is merely an escape from your monotonous, stupid and cruel life.
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