Quotes About Diplomacy

Trust, But Verify...Ronald Reagan

My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes.

For more than five years, I'd made little progress with my efforts at quiet diplomacy—for one thing, the Soviet leaders kept dying on me.

But our strategy for peace with freedom must also be based on strength—economic strength and military strength.

I'd learned a few lessons about negotiating: You're unlikely to ever get all you want; you'll probably get more of what you want if you don't issue ultimatums and leave your adversary room to maneuver; you shouldn't back your adversary into a corner, embarrass him, or humiliate him; and sometimes the easiest way to get some things done is for the top people to do them alone and in private.

the Polish people be allowed to have a voice in the kind of govt. they want. Under the Yalta Pact the Soviets agreed they & others would be allowed to do this. The Soviets have never honored that promise.

N.S.C. briefing. Castro is very nervous. We'll try to keep him that way.

Part of the difficulty in accepting the good news about trade is in our words. We too often talk about trade while using the vocabulary of war. In war, for one side to win, the other must lose. But commerce is not warfare. Trade is an economic alliance that benefits both countries. There are no losers, only winners; and trade helps strengthen the free world.

than the one between the United States and the United Kingdom. Not only did Margaret Thatcher and I become personal friends and share a similar philosophy about government; the alliance

We do more for the under developed nations than anyone in the world but they act as if we're out to destroy them and they never say boo to the Soviets.

Jamestown military leader John Smith threatened to kill all the women and children if the Powhatan leaders would not feed and clothe the settlers as well as provide them with land and labor.

political position. Back in

Saluto, one of them said in farewell. Arrivederci, I called, so as not to be outdone.

She was a riddle, who mysteriously possessed her own solution, a secret, and what are all diplomats' secrets compared with this, an enigma, and what in all the world is so beautiful as the word that solves it?

remember that even if you intend to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.

Sandra nodded. "Agreed. A…oh, God, let's not call it a United Nations, shall we? That would doom things from the start.

their true characters were shown not in the war they fought but in the peace they made.

When the sword of the tongue is drawn, the emperor thought, it inflicts deeper cuts than the sharpest blade.

How do you introduce boyfriend C to boyfriend A after boyfriend A has been such a good sport, of late, about boyfriend B, who is no longer in the picture?

I thought, between sports and news and television and friendship, that you could end the Cold War and, by God, we did.

We maintain the peace through our strength; weakness only invites aggression.

I hold it to be a proof of great prudence for men to abstain from threats and insulting words toward anyone, for neither diminishes the strength of the enemy.

Don't mistake politeness for lack of strength.

In relations with other nations, there is neither right nor wrong; there is only strength and weakness.