It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the inevitability of certain actions shaped by one's nature and circumstances.
Henry A. Kissinger's quote suggests that actions driven by one's innate characteristics and external conditions are often unavoidable, much like a Greek tragedy where the fate of characters is predetermined. Nixon's actions are portrayed as an expression of his nature, indicating that once a particular path is taken, it can lead to an inescapable outcome.
In practice
In a discussion about historical events that shaped politics, this quote reinforces the idea that leaders are often trapped by their own decisions.
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.
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.
If I should ever be captured, I want no negotiation - and if I should request a negotiation from captivity they should consider that a sign of duress.
You are the light of the world. You are the _x000D_ consciousness that illuminates the world. Know yourself as that, and that's _x000D_ freedom, liberation, awakening, the end of suffering and madness. And it's _x000D_ happening right here.
Men will find that they can ... avoid far more easily the perils which beset them on all sides by united action.
One must not cheat anyone, not even the world of its victory.
Now, when Luke Skywalker unmasks his father, he is taking off the machine role that the father has played. The father was the uniform. That is power, the state role.
The assumption is that life doesn't need to be navigated with lessons. You can just do it intuitively. After all, you only need to achieve autonomy from your parents, find a moderately satisfying job, form a relationship, perhaps raise some children, watch the onset of mortality in your parents' generation and eventually in your own, until one day a fatal illness starts gnawing at your innards and you calmly go to the grave, shut the coffin and are done with the self-evident business of life.
As man seeks justice in equality, so society seeks order in anarchy.
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