A country that demands moral perfection in its foreign policy will achieve neither perfection nor security.
Interpretation
Moral perfection in foreign policy is unattainable and can lead to neither safety nor idealism.
Henry Kissinger's quote suggests that striving for absolute moral perfection in the realm of foreign policy is unrealistic and counterproductive. Rather than achieving a flawless or secure outcome, such an approach can lead to failures and vulnerabilities, as the complexities of international relations often require pragmatic, rather than purely idealistic, decisions.
In practice
A speaker at a political conference discussing the complexities of international relations.
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 least strained and most natural ways of the soul are the most beautiful; the best occupations are the least forced.
The touchstone of the Holy Spirit’s work in us is the answer to our Lord’s question: “Who do men say that the Son of Man is?” Our Lord makes human destiny depend on that one thing, Who men say He is, because the revelation of Who Jesus is is only given by the Holy Spirit.
Zionism itself has paradoxically come to adopt some antisemitic logic in its hatred of Jews who do not fully identify with the politics of the state of Israel. Their target, the figure of the Jew who doubts the Zionist project, is constructed in the same way as the European antisemites constructed the figures of the Jew – he is dangerous because he lives among us, but is not really one of us.
It is a great comfort to know that our judge will be none other than our savior.
At the time I did not know that stories of life are often more like rivers than books.
Whenever you find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard; you will probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the evidence warrants.
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