Quotes About Diplomacy

I think the Sino-American relationship is the most important geo-strategic question facing us.

If Russia rises, it means that the USA falls down.

If Catholics and Jews can today come together regularly for talks after so many tears and so much blood have been shed, than Jews and Arabs must be able to do the same.

Nature is not simply a technical or economical resource, and human beings are not mere numbers. To suggest that one can somehow align all the squabbling institutions of science, environmental management, government and diplomacy in an alliance of convenience to regulate the global climate seems to me optimistic.

There are no techniques in politics.

Why did the Clinton Administration continue to liberalize export controls on sensitive technologies even after it learned that China had stolen designs?

The way you have bipartisan negotiations, you sit down across the table, as we did with Ted Kennedy, as I've done with many other members, and you say, 'OK, here's what I want, here's what you want. We'll adhere to your principles, but we'll make concessions.'

Teddy Roosevelt... once said, 'Speak softly and carry a big stick.' Jimmy Carter wants to speak loudly and carry a fly swatter.

We see today that there is a growing understanding in the international community that the extremist regime in Tehran is not just Israel's problem, but rather an issue that the entire international community must grapple with.

Henry Kissinger never wanted the 20,000 pages of his telephone transcripts made public - not while he was alive, at any rate.

Somebody should tell the president of Mexico that when he appears on American television, he should speak English.

I want you to know that, despite what you might read at times in the newspapers or see on the television news, we have actually been getting a lot of things done the last several months, the U.S.-Canada relationship.

You don't tell deliberate lies, but sometimes you have to be evasive.

I suspect millions of people from my generation probably have comparable stories to tell: if not of sports simulations then of Dungeons & Dragons, or the geopolitical strategy of games like Diplomacy, a kind of chess superimposed onto actual history.

Donald Trump tells us that he is very, very smart. I'm afraid that when it comes to foreign policy, he is very, very not smart.

The Queen rarely loses her temper, but when she does, she brooks no argument.

I have always thought that foreign-policy idealism has to be tempered with realism.

As Napoleon said, to know a nation's geography is to know its foreign policy

As Morgenthau points out, small- and medium-sized states like Israel, Great Britain, France, and Iran cannot absorb the same level of punishment as continental-sized states such as the United States, Russia, and China, so that they lack the requisite credibility in their nuclear threats.

Realists value order above freedom: for them the latter becomes important only after the former has been established.

The art of diplomacy is finding a reasonable route among imperfect alternatives.

The use of tact is always needful but it is especially necessary when speaking a truth that may strike a sensitive nerve in another.

The war... was an unnecessary condition of affairs, and might have been avoided if forebearance and wisdom had been practiced on both sides.

As the increasing number of Americans attempting to do business in China are discovering, the Chinese may move, but not in direct response to demands or on someone else's timetable. In the twenty-first century, China will be a formidable and staunchly independent force.