Quotes About Diplomacy

The outbreak of war in 1792 offered enticing opportunities to attain longstanding

If you can't say something nice about a person, go ahead

The authentic pragmatist realizes you can't get everything you think is right, but you can get much or most of it through negotiation. The authentic pragmatist sticks to his or her values and works to satisfy them maximally. The inauthentic pragmatist, on the other hand, is willing to depart from his or her true values for the sake of political gain. There

To declare the Cold War over, and declare democracy has won out over totalitarianism, is a measure of arrogance and wrong-headedness.

We won the Cold War because we showed nuclear vigilance and diligence.

The options are war versus peace, and I am delighted that, so far, it appears that peaceful negotiation has won the day.

The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make the rest of us wonder at the possibility that we might be missing something.

Sometimes you just wonder whether people just don't have the sensitivity or decency. I'm a member of the media myself: I host a talk show. I know sometimes when you want to ask something, you can circumvent it with words and vocabulary. You don't suddenly just go out there and ask something directly in the pretense of being absolutely candid.

Maybe we ought to consider a Golden Rule in foreign policy: Don't do to other nations what we don't want happening to us. We endlessly bomb these countries and then we wonder why they get upset with us?

I'm a walkawayer. If someone brings me a really crap meal in a restaurant I will tell them it's wonderful and then just never go to the restaurant again. I think that's the best way to do it generally, rather than sit and fight and annoy your head. Just pretend to enjoy it and then leave.

A sincere diplomat is like dry water or wooden iron.

Avoid sarcasm. Don't insist on the last word.

I think the firmness in one's stance can be conveyed in a different manner without being indecent or using harsh words.

I told him that my own opinion was that the time now and the method now to deal with Russia was to keep our mouths shut and let our actions speak for words.

For diplomacy to be effective, words must be credible - and no one can now doubt the word of America.

For years, we have been asking the E.U. to create something similar to the Russia-NATO council. Not in order to simply exchange opinions and work out recommendations, but to make decisions.

Had we not pursued the hydrogen bomb, there is a very real threat that we would now all be speaking Russian. I have no regrets.

The threat today is not that of the 1930s. It's not big powers going to war with each other. The ravages which fundamentalist political ideology inflicted on the 20th century are memories. The Cold war is over. Europe is at peace, if not always diplomatically.

I'm still bothered by the threat of nuclear war.

Ronald Reagan in foreign affairs, I think, was someone who had certain, very general ideas, general propositions by which he lives: To combat communism, to build up the American military power to assure our national security against any conceivable threat.

China is not an economic enemy or existential national security threat to the United States.

We ask them to remove the missiles deployed against Taiwan, give up their military threat, and instead let us together open the door to cross-Strait peaceful and stable dialogue and negotiations.

If there is no direct threat why are we invading?

Many defense experts have predicted that we face no greater threat from a single country than from Iran.