Henry Alfred Kissinger (May 27, 1923 – November 29, 2023)

An American diplomat and political scientist.

Kissinger, a proponent of Realpolitik, played a dominant role in U.S. foreign policy between 1969 and 1977. During this time, he pioneered the Détente policy that led to a significant easing of tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, and played a major role in the meetings with Premier Zhou Enlai in 1972, which led to the "opening up" of China and a new strategic counter-Soviet, Sino-American alliance. He ended the Vietnam War, for which his efforts made him a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973.

His record in foreign policy made him an enemy among both anti-war activists and anti-communists, and the controversies surrounding him never abated in the years since he served the national government. Nonetheless, he is widely considered to have been one of the most important strategic thinkers of the latter half of the 20th century. He died on November 29, 2023, of natural causes.

○ If you don't know where you are going, all roads will lead you nowhere.

○ Every success is just buying a ticket to a harder problem.

○ Power is a terrible aphrodisiac.

○ Art is the expression of human joy in work.

○ The mind is remarkably clear when there are no alternatives.

○ To be absolutely certain about something, you have to know everything about it or nothing at all.

○ Conventional armies win when they don't fight, guerrillas win when they do.

○ The task of a leader is to take people from where they are to where they've never been before.

○ We must never abandon principles, but we must also recognize that we cannot maintain principles if we do not survive.

○ Most high-level officials retire with the same insights and perceptions they had when they entered. They learn how to make decisions, but they don't learn what decisions to make.

○ Diplomacy is the art of restraining power.