Quotes About Diplomacy

If you interview world leaders, everybody will say they are for free trade. But what they mean by it and what they do when they say they are pro free trade, you have to watch and see.

When people come to write about my period of office, I would be very happy if they say that I made a contribution to finding the happy medium again for the Germans.

It is better to discuss things, to argue and engage in polemics than make perfidious plans of mutual destruction.

We must not let ourselves be seen as rushing around the world looking for arguments... Nor should we let ourselves be seen as ignoring allies, disillusioning friends, thinking only of ourselves in the most narrow terms. That is not how we survived the 20th century. Nor will it serve in the 21st.

Knowledge is generally considered a good thing; so, presumably, knowing more about how the U.S. thinks and operates around the world is also good.

Give a member of Congress a junket and a mimeograph machine and he thinks he is secretary of state.

Whatever one thinks of President George W. Bush and his unilateralist crew, most of the people laughing at us do not think we are evil. What they think is that we are naive and incompetent.

Every state has not only the right but the duty to make adequate provision for its own defense in the way it thinks best, providing it does not do so at the expense of any other state.

Apparently Iran thinks that it can continue to deceive the world in order to reach its goals.

What we ask of the developed countries is to let the Third World find a third way.

In less than eighteen months, it prepared a first draft which it submitted to the General Assembly and which, at the end of one hundred sessions of elevated, often impassioned discussion, was adopted in the form of thirty articles on December 10, 1948.

Back channels themselves are as old as American diplomacy. Thomas Jefferson was an early enthusiast - he often routed around his secretary of state, once sending a secret letter to the American envoy in France, Robert Livingston, that contained a coded message.

The Arab League tells us to go in and take out Qaddafi. We've spent billions of dollars already with respect to the Arab League. Billions of dollars, because they told us to do it. Why aren't they paying for it? They don't like Qaddafi, Qaddafi's been a terrible thorn in their side.

In my mind the city of Ariel is a thorn in Israel's side and a serious obstacle to peace.

I think that we have to do our job well, investigate thoroughly and then describe very honestly what we see to the Security Council. And some of the things might please people there and other things may not please the people.

The best move you can make in negotiation is to think of an incentive the other person hasn't even thought of - and then meet it.

Every war makes other wars more likely.

China plays chess. America plays checkers.

Does one refuse to ride with an Emperor?' 'If one is wise, one does not.

War has rules, mud wrestling has rules - politics has no rules.

President Eisenhower was a fine general and a good, decent man, but if he had fought World War II the way he fought for civil rights, we would all be speaking German now.

When Pack meets with Pack in the Jungle, and neither will go from the trail,Lie down till the leaders have spoken—it may be fair words shall prevail.

Part of your job as a businessperson and diplomat is to get what you need and to not take it too personally.

You cannot be politically correct in a war.