Quotes About Diplomacy

The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes.

There is no greater mistake than to imagine that the Arabs, who spread with such astonishing rapidity over half the civilized world, were in any real sense a united people. So far was this from being the truth, that it demanded all Mohammed's diplomatic skill, and all his marvellous personal prestige, to keep up a semblance of unity even while he was alive.

I must acknowledge, once and for all, that the purpose of diplomacy is to prolong a crisis.

The ability of Greece to generate foreign interventions in its favor separates the Greek experience from that of the other Balkan states.

I had sworn to myself – an oath which I still kept in 1940 – never to write a single word that affirmed war or disparaged another nation.

Courtiers of all ages feel one great need: to speak in such a way that they do not say anything.

For whoever habitually suppresses the truth in the interests of tact will produce a deformity from the womb of his thought.

Don't lie, but don't tell the whole truth.

If I have any advice to give to the Syrian president it is to cooperate for the sake of the investigation or for the sake of uncovering the truth.

The sexual organs are the most sensitive organs of the human being. They are not diplomats. They tell the truth.

That is where consensus-building begins-with the idea that you have your own truth, but that the negotiator on the other side of the table has his own truth as well.

Establish the eternal truth that acquiescence under insult is not the way to escape war.

I believe in friendly compromise. I said over in the Senate hearings that truth is the glue that holds government together. Compromise is the oil that makes governments go.

I have no secret methods. I know no diplomacy save that of truth. I have no weapon but non-violence.

We should not be afraid to speak the truth to our powerful friend the United States.

In my experience tact is usually worse than the brutalities of truth.

This campaign of non-cooperation has no reference to diplomacy, secret or open. The only diplomacy it admits of is the statement and pursuance of truth at any cost.

There are questions so indiscreet, that they deserve neither truth nor falsehood in reply.

It is a principle of diplomacy that one must know something of the truth in order to lie convincingly.

But the truth is, countries have to do what is best in each instance to pursue both their interest and their values.

Peace if possible but truth at any rate.

Perhaps we have been guilty of some terminological inexactitudes.

In the Middle East, no one gets credit for a preemptive cringe.

And while generally loyal to the United States, ibn Saud displayed no reservations about negotiating with Britain and France in order to extract higher contract fees from the Americans. Indeed, when asked by American negotiators why he favored the United States over the Europeans, ibn Saud candidly replied, "You are very far away!