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The world’s democracies need to defend and sustain their Enlightenment values. A global retreat from balancing power with legitimacy will cause the social contract to disintegrate both domestically and internationally.

— Henry Kissinger

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More quotes by Henry Kissinger

The accumulation of nuclear arms has to be constrained if mankind is not to destroy itself.

Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.

The End of the Road (1982)

Covert action should not be confused with missionary work.

Of course, over time, even two armed blind men can do enormous damage to each other, not to speak of the room.

The security of Israel is a moral imperative for all free peoples.

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The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.

John Adams A Defence of the Constitutions of Government (1787)

There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped.

Robert Anton Wilson

When we see a great man desiring power instead of his real goal we soon recognize that he is sick, or more precisely that his attitude to his work is sick.

Martin Buber What is Man? (1938)

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

C. S. Lewis God in the Dock (1970)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Henry Kissinger (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.