Quotes About Diplomacy

Be careful. Be diplomatic. Try not to blow anything up.

if some cat brings in a tune that makes me want to stab myself in the ear with a pencil, I gotta be all, "Great job, kiddo! Keep at it!

When two nations had a contradictory assessment of their own military power and the issue at state was vital to both nations, war was likely.

It is the problem of accurately measuring the relative power of nations which goes far to explain why wars occur. War is a dispute about the measurement of power. War marks the choice of a new set of weights and measures.

On the eve of each war at least one of the nations miscalculated its bargaining power. In that sense every war comes from a misunderstanding. And in that sense every war is an accident.

Wars can only occur when two nations decide that they can gain more by fighting than by negotiating. War can only begin and can only continue with the consent of at least two nations.

War and peace are not separate compartments. Peace depends on threats and force; often peace is the crystallisation of past force.

Wars end when nations agree that war is an unsatisfactory instrument for solving their dispute; wars begin when nations agree that peaceful diplomacy is an unsatisfactory instrument for solving their dispute. Agreement is the essence of the transition from peace to war and from war to peace, for those are merely alternating phases of a relationship between nations.

Why did nations turn so often to war in the belief that it was a sharp and quick instrument for shaping international affairs when again and again the instrument had proved to be blunt or unpredictable? This recurring optimism is a vital prelude to war. Anything which increases the optimism is a cause of war. Anything which dampens that optimism is a cause of peace.

My God, I would never do anything to encourage Hanoi—I mean Saigon—not to come to the table because, basically, that was what you got out of your bombing pause, that, good God, we want them over in Paris. We've got to get them to Paris or you can't have peace….I just want you to know, I'm not trying to interfere with your conduct of it. I mean I'll only do what you and Rusk want me to do, but I'll do anything…

WE APPARENTLY stand quite alone," Ho told a Western reporter in Hanoi that fall. No nation, not even the Soviet Union, was willing to recognize his government. Even the French Communist Party he had helped to found refused to support Indochinese independence. "We shall have to depend on ourselves.

Here's a thought. You answer what I ask and I keep not killing you." - Antiope Flint - DREAMNASIUM

A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments.

The only way human beings can win a war is to prevent it.

A steady patriot of the world alone,The friend of every country but his own.

And I hope America will realise, as the only superpower now, it really must use its power in a way that's going to build up the world, and to support the United Nations.

Palestine must ultimately become a state which guards the rights and interests of Moslems, Jews and Christians alike."56

Hostesses who entertain much must make up their parties as ministers make up their cabinets, on grounds other than personal liking.

The best thing we can do if we want the Russians to let us be Americans is to let the Russians be Russian.

We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.

You have no idea how much it contributes to the general politeness and pleasantness of diplomacy when you have a little quiet armed force in the background

In Geo-Politics, a nation has no permanent allies or permanent enemies, only permanent interests.

It has always struck me as the world's great fortune that the two great superpowers were the United States and the Soviet Union, who managed the Cold War with meticulous care in retrospect. Imagine the European diplomats of 1914 or 1938 armed with nuclear weapons. It is easy to believe they would not have been as cautious.

We should remember what Bismarck said in 1888: "If there is ever another war in Europe, it will come out of some damned silly thing in the Balkans." Balkan