"The great contribution of President Ford was that he managed to strike a balance between the American temptation toward perfectionism and the absolute, and the temptation to abandon everything because one cannot have the perfect and the absolute. He brought about an approach that I believe is essential to the conduct of a continuing foreign policy that works toward the maximum one can achieve but does not go beyond what the American people can sustain or what the international community can comprehend."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Anti-communists from the United StatesCentenariansUnited States Secretaries of StateDiplomats of the United StatesNobel Peace Prize laureates
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
"He Moved With Calm" in Newsweek (7 January 2007)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Related Quotes
"I...was a little puzzled by your suggestion that we should return to a diplomacy like Bismarck's. Having once plannedβ¦"
"In some respects the intellectual has never been more in demand; that he makes such a relatively small contribution iβ¦"
"[T]he most fundamental problem of politics, which is not the control of wickedness but the limitation of righteousness."
"The frequently voiced view that we should conduct our diplomacy so as to bring about a rift between Communist China aβ¦"
"If Communist China agrees to renounce the use of force in the formosa strait, we could consider opening up channels oβ¦"
"Any people [Jews] who have been persecuted for two thousand years must be doing something wrong."
"The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer."
"How many people did (Khmer Rouge Foreign Minister Ieng Sary) kill? ... Tens of thousands?"
"It is a mistake to assume that diplomacy can always settle international disputes if there is "good faith" and "williβ¦"
"[T]hat it is unable to relate man to the forces outside himself whose makings he sees but whose motives he can grasp β¦"