Quotes About Diplomacy

Sometimes I think that the only way to unite the nations of the world would be for the earth to be attacked by Mars. We'd all love each other like hell then.

Unless attribution is followed by an effective response, it makes a country look weak, and it often makes sense for a nation not to publicly attribute a cyberattack unless it can respond.

And yet, it is true that the third attractor doesn't look very attractive. It requires too much care, too much attention, too much time, too much diplomacy. Even today it is the Global that shines, that liberates, that arouses enthusiasm, that makes it possible to remain so unaware, that emancipates, that gives the impression of eternal youth. Only it does not exist. It is the Local that reassures, that calms, that offers an identity. But it does not exist either.

No one is more insufferable than he who lacks basic courtesy.

To win a truly great life for the people of Israel, a great peace is necessary, not a fictitious peace, the dwarfish peace that is no more than a feeble intermission, but a true peace with the neighboring peoples, which alone can render possible a common development of this portion of the earth as the vanguard of the awakening Near East.

We need a president who's fluent in at least one language.

well, blessed are the peacemakers, especially the fighting peacemakers

Either war is finished, or we are.

22 Emily's Letters After the Suez fiasco, Great Britain and France were no longer serious players in the Middle East, and Israel was tarred as their co-conspirator in a failed last gasp of imperialism.

War is politics implemented by the use of force.

What the Greeks should do, of course, is take advantage of the fact that they all speak the same language, and use heralds and messengers to settle their differences Ã¢â'¬â€œ anything rather than open warfare.

No ruler in the history of the world has ever been able to afford a war. They're not affordable things. No prince ever says, 'This is my budget, so this is the kind of war I can have.

The poet Archibald MacLeish, then an Assistant Secretary of State, spoke critically of what he saw in the postwar world: As things are now going, the peace we will make, the peace we seem to be making, will be a peace of oil, a peace of gold, a peace of shipping, a peace, in brief . . . without moral purpose or human interest. . . .

In the Mexican War, a skirmish between Mexican and American troops on the Texas-Mexico border led President Polk to state that "American blood has been shed on American soil," and to ask Congress for war. Actually, the encounter took place in disputed territory, and Polk's diary shows that he wanted an excuse for war so the United States could take from Mexico what the United States coveted, California and the whole Southwest.

Is there a "national interest" when a few people decide on war, and huge numbers of others—here and abroad—are killed or crippled as a result of such a decision? Should citizens not ask in whose interest are we doing what we are doing? Then why not, I came to think, tell the story of wars not through the eyes of the generals and diplomats but from the viewpoints of the GIs, of the parents who received the black-bordered telegrams, even of "the enemy.

Too much history, he contends, is written "from the point of view of governments, conquerors, diplomats, leaders." His People's History, by way of contrast, sides with the losers, the downtrodden, the underdog. It is a book "disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." ….

To put it another way, war in our time is always a war against children. And if the children of other countries are to be granted an equal right to life with our own children, then we must use our extraordinary human ingenuity to find nonmilitary solutions for world problems.

U.S. foreign policy should be designed to make the United States safer and more prosperous; it's foolish to think that Americans can safeguard their interests and promote prosperity without accepting some costs and risks far beyond our borders.

The Greek Orthodox bishops made a point of snubbing John Paul. He didn't complain. They insulted him. He didn't defend himself. They demanded he apologize for Catholic sins from centuries ago. And John Paul, speaking on behalf of one billion living souls and the untold Catholic dead, apologized.

He knew from long experience that a letter sent in fury merely put a weapon into the hands of your enemy

He knew from long experience that a letter sent in fury merely put a weapon into the hands of your enemy. Poison, in preserved form, to be used against you long into the future.

the softest, sweetest part of the Cold War, the only truly interesting part, the war of ideas.

desde el siglo XVI la base de la política inglesa y posteriormente británica en Europa fue la consecución del equilibrio de poder. Se me ordenó que leyera sobre el Congreso de Viena de 1815.Tony insistía en que un equilibrio entre naciones era el cimiento de un sistema jurídico internacional de diplomacia pacífica. Era vital que los países se controlasen mutuamente.

Roosevelt, according to a story told by Hopkins, was once wheeled into Churchill's bedroom just as the prime minister was emerging from his bath, stark naked. The president, flustered, told his attendant to back him out of the room, but Churchill theatrically declared, "The Prime Minister of Great Britain has nothing to conceal from the President of the United States.