Kissinger, in His Own Words
Kissinger

"Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy." - Henry Kissinger, quoted in "Kiss the Boys Goodbye: How the United States Betrayed Its Own POW's in Vietnam"

"I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves."
-- Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State under Richard Nixon, about Chile prior to the CIA overthrow of the democratically elected government of socialist President Salvadore Allende in 1973

"Why should we flagellate ourselves for what the Cambodians did to each other?"
-- Henry Kissinger - who (with Richard Nixon) was responsible for the massive bombing of Cambodia in 1973, which killed three-quarters of a million peasants and disrupted Cambodian society, setting the stage for Pol Pot to come to power and ultimately kill another one-and-a-half million people

"The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer."
--Henry Kissinger

"Wouldn't have mattered very much. If the Vietnam domino had fallen then, no great loss."
-- Henry Kissinger, when asked "What if the United States had allowed Vietnam to go communist after World War II?"

“Corrupt politicians make the other ten percent look bad.”
-Henry Kissinger

Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
– Henry Kissinger, 56th U.S. Secretary of State and 1973 Nobel Prize-Winner for Peace

Today Americans would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow they will be grateful. This is especially true if they were told there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead with world leaders to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well being granted to them by their world government.
– Henry Kissinger

"It is an act of insanity and national humiliation to have a law prohibiting the President from ordering assassination."
-- Henry Kissinger, In the minutes of a secret 1975 meeting of the National Security Council attended by President Ford - LOST CRUSADER: The Secret Wars of CIA Director William Colby, by John Prados, Oxford University Press, 2003.

"The US must carry out some act somewhere in the world which shows its determination to continue to be a world power."
-- Henry Kissinger, post-Vietnam blues, as quoted in The Washington Post, April 1975

"I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves."
-- Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State under Richard Nixon, about Chile prior to the CIA overthrow of the democratically elected government of socialist President Salvadore Allende in 1973 ('Communism' is just a pretext, see Communism)

"Covert action should not be confused with missionary work."
-- Henry Kissinger, commenting on the US sellout of the Kurds in Iraq in 1975