In his essay, ‘Perpetual Peace,’ the philosopher, Immanuel Kant, argued that perpetual peace would eventually come to the world in one of two ways, by human insight or by conflicts and catastrophes of a magnitude that left humanity no other choice. We are at such a juncture.
Interpretation
Kissinger reflects on the potential paths to achieving lasting peace in the world.
In this quote, Henry A. Kissinger references Immanuel Kant's notion that true and lasting peace may be achieved either through human wisdom and understanding or through severe conflicts that ultimately force humanity to change its ways. Kissinger suggests that the world may be at a crucial point where its future, especially regarding peace, hangs in the balance due to significant challenges and conflicts faced today.
In practice
In a speech about global diplomacy, one might say, 'As we navigate today's challenges, we must remember that, as Kant suggested, peace may only come through insight or through the harsh lessons of conflict.'
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.
Historical capitalism is a materialist civilization.
A man can spend several hours sitting cross-legged in the same position if he knows that noting prevents him from changing it; but if he knows that he has to sit with his legs crossed like that, he will get cramps, his legs will twitch and strain towards where he would like to stretch them.
We must be free for the truth; and conversely, to be able to be open toward the truth may be our deepest freedom as human creatures.
. . .only the victims and survivors can truly comprehend the awfulness of that time and place; the rest of us live on the other side of the fence, staring through from our own comfortable place, trying in our own clumsy ways to make sense of it all.
Cities are never random. No matter how chaotic they might seem, everything about them grows out of a need to solve a problem. In fact, a city is nothing more than a solution to a problem, that in turn creates more problems that need more solutions, until towers rise, roads widen, bridges are built, and millions of people are caught up in a mad race to feed the problem-solving, problem-creating frenzy.
My perception has changed from thinking if someone's in jail they're supposed to be, to there's a lot of factors that's not that simple.
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