Quotes About Diplomacy

I started, you know, to work as a diplomat during the Soviet days, and in spite of ideology being very high on the Communist Party agenda, I can assure you that in practical terms, we have always been trying to be pragmatic.

I have spoken to Chinese leaders occasionally on human rights, but I've always done it in private.

There is an obvious truth here that must be spoken. The truth is that Assad, Russia, and Iran have no interest in peace.

Let us conduct ourselves so that all men wish to be our friends and all fear to be our enemies.

One man's opportunism is another man's statesmanship.

No man can tame a tiger into a kitten by stroking it. There can be no appeasement with ruthlessness. There can be no reasoning with an incendiary bomb.

Men like M. de Talleyrand are like sharp instruments with which it is dangerous to play.

It is insane that two men, sitting on opposite sides of the world, should be able to decide to bring an end to civilization.

If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world.

It is a good point of cunning for a man to shape the answer he would have in his own words and propositions, for it makes the other party stick the less.

Army: A body of men assembled to rectify the mistakes of the diplomats.

Man's greatest blunder has been in trying to make peace with the skies instead of making peace with his neighbors

In all negotiations of difficulty, a man may not look to sow and reap at once; but must prepare business, and so ripen it by degrees.

To manage men one ought to have a sharp mind in a velvet sheath.

What else can you tell us about this batna, Surendranath?" "I learnt it from English traders in Surat," said the befuddled Surendranath, "It stands for Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement.

This was politics. It was ugly, it was irrational, but it was preferable to war.

How does a poor country defeat rich ones?" "Indeed, the answer is not by acquiring wealth in the sense that France has it." "Meaning vineyards, farms, peasants, cows?" "But rather to play a sort of trick and redefine wealth to mean something novel." "Currency!" "Indeed.

If aliens ever give us a call, the Chinese will be the first to know.

Cursed are the peacemakers for they make the next war harder than the last.

Diplomacy is the art of saying nice doggy, until you can find a rock.

We weren't going to win the war on terrorism until we won the war of the words.

As he maneuvered the boat, he said, "In the old days of gunboat diplomacy, if some pisspot country attacked Westerners, a naval fleet would assemble and bombard the port city until it burned to the ground. Now… well, the primitive little assholes of the world get away with too much.

No tenemos ningún interés en Sudamérica; no sentimos ninguna simpatía políticamente fundamentada hacia ellos. Venimos de orígenes distintos... Ni todos los tratados que pudiéramos hacer, ni los comisionados que pudiéramos enviar, ni el dinero que pudiéramos prestarles, transformarían a sus Bolívares... en Washingtons'. —Edward Everett

The Emperor and his ministers might dance Western dances and even, in violation of traditional Japanese propriety, smile Western smiles. But their underlying and deadly earnest aim was always to wipe the smiles off European faces.