Sublime

‘Statesmen are not called upon only to settle easy questions. These often settle themselves. It is where the balance quivers, and the proportions are veiled in mist, that the opportunity for world-saving decisions presents itself.’[1]

he cautioned me ‘never to confuse energy with strength’.

Leadership is most essential during periods of transition, when values and institutions are losing their relevance, and the outlines of a worthy future are in controversy.

He spoke calmly, only occasionally using his hands for emphasis. Always well prepared on contemporary issues, he never discussed his personal life in my presence. Nor did he inquire into my own, though – given the perennial effectiveness of the German bureaucracy – surely he knew my family history and understood the paths onto which fate had placed

Leaders can be magnified – or diminished – by the qualities of those around them.

Henry Kissinger established his reputation as a foreign policy expert with the publication of Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy in 1957—an unrelenting critique of Eisenhower’s New Look strategy.34