Politics & Power Quote by Henry A. Kissinger

Kissinger’s line lands like a cigar-chomping joke, but it’s really a power analyst’s shrug dressed up as comedy. The arithmetic is obviously absurd; that’s the point. By flipping the usual moral math - a few bad apples spoiling the bunch - he turns political cynicism into a wry inevitability. If most politicians are the problem, then “reputation” becomes something politics can’t earn, only manage.

The subtext is self-protective and strategic. Kissinger made a career in the shadowy zone where democratic ideals collide with state necessity, and where outcomes are judged less by purity than by stability. Framed this way, public disgust isn’t a verdict on a particular scandal or party; it’s ambient weather. The joke reassures insiders: the institution will always look compromised, so don’t confuse popularity with legitimacy, and don’t expect gratitude for ugly choices made in the name of “national interest.”

Context matters because Kissinger’s own reputation was permanently split-screen: Nobel laureate and diplomatic architect to some; war criminal to others. That tension animates the line. It’s a way to relativize outrage - to suggest that condemnation is indiscriminate, that the public can’t tell the 10 percent “good” from the 90 percent “bad,” or maybe that the distinction is mostly theater. The brilliance is how it invites laughter while smuggling in a colder claim: politics isn’t a moral vocation; it’s a reputational fight over necessary damage.