Quotes About Diplomacy

Sugarcoat your complaints a little bit, as you would with a good friend whose feelings you don't want to hurt. (Gottman calls this the "soft start-up.")

Speak gently but look out for your rights.

After your Highnesses ended the war of the Moors who reigned in Europe, and finished the war of the great city of Granada, where this present year [1492] on the 2nd January I saw the royal banners of Your Highnesses planted by force of arms on the towers of the Alhambra, which is the fortress of the said city, I saw the Moorish sultan issue from the gates of the said city, and kiss the royal hands of Your Highnesses …

He ran Iran, which is a big and complicated country, wearing a pair of pyjamas.

It was inevitable that Red China would invade Tibet, and then there would be no place for us two friends of Tibetan independence.

The Bourbon King was first ambassador of reason and human happiness.

Well in the end the world can crank itself up to sanctions, as it has with Zimbabwe, another sad case.

Southern Lady Code: a technique by which, if you don't have something nice to say, you say something not-so-nice in a nice way.

Soviet Russia was grudgingly admired by the Franco regime.

Do you think we'd still be standing here if he had shown up? What do you think we'd be doing here?' I asked. I got away with it because I put the question as if I was curious rather than just giving sass. But one of the boys told Louis, 'I guess your girlfriend likes to talk.

But when will our leaders learn - war is not the answer.

You don't spread democracy with a barrel of a gun.

How have relations with Iran and Belarus benefited Venezuela? We are interested in countries that have democracies, that respect human rights, that we have an affinity with. What affinity do we have with Iran?

We would not have our politics distracted and embittered by the dissensions of other lands.

Recognition of belligerency as an expression of sympathy is all very well.

But this was not enough to check the English. The French stronghold, owing largely to the efforts of Mr. Pitt and the British navy, was doomed, and the brave garrison, deserting their hopeless post, permitted Forbes to march in unmolested, and name his conquest Fort Pitt.

Gentlemen, I fervently trust that before long the principle of arbitration may win such confidence as to justify its extension to a wider field of international differences.

If you wish to avoid foreign collision, you had better abandon the ocean.

Wars do not end wars any more than an extraordinarily large conflagration does away with the fire hazard.

Tradition has it that Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, preferred to speak French to diplomats, Italian to ladies, German to stable boys and Spanish to God. English he seems to have used sparingly – to talk to geese.

We owe pandemonium to Milton's Paradise Lost (where it is 'the high Capital of Satan and his Peers'), diplomacy to Edmund Burke, and pessimism to Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Lincoln had a masterful grasp of great subjects. He was able to look at events from all sides, so as to appreciate how they would appear to different grades of intelligence, different classes of people, different sections of the country. More than once this many-sidedness of his mind saved the country from ruin.

No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time.

No foreign policy-no matter how ingenious-has any chance of success if it is born in the minds of a few and carried in the hearts of none.