Quotes About Diplomacy

3A trap": we attack, we accommodate (in other words, give in), or we avoid altogether

You need confidence to stand up for yourself in the face of the other's reaction. You need power to be able to follow through on your No if the other refuses to respect it.

It is not love, or morality, or international law that determines the outcome of world affairs, but the changing distribution of organized force

You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war.' - To Neville Chamberlain

When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.

When I am abroad, I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.

There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them

For get this quite clear, every time we have to decide between Europe and the open sea, it is always the open sea we shall choose. Every time I have to decide between you [Charles de Gaulle] and Roosevelt, I shall always choose Roosevelt.

If we don't end war, war will end us.

Quelli che sono in grado di vincere una guerra possono raramente realizzare una pace conveniente, e quelli che possono realizzare una buona pace non hanno mai vinto una guerra.

Politics is like waking up in the morning. You never know whose head you will find on the pillow.

You may speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, but it all depends how you speak it! Got to be tactful, persuasive, throw yourself on the mercy and indulgence of the law. Be humble and innocent, not stiff-backed and defiant.

For the first time in nearly twenty-five years, our country is having anything to do with the Chinamen, an it is an event far more important than any damn ping-pong game. It is diplomacy, and the future of the human race might be at stake. Do you understand what I am saying? I shrug my shoulders an nod my head, but something down in me sinkin' fast. I am jus' a po' ole idiot, an now I have got the whole human race to look after.

Study history, study history. In history lies all the secrets of statecraft.

I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. But perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.

If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.

The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong.

The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative.

If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce.

No lover ever studied every whim of his mistress as I did those of President Roosevelt.

If you are going to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.

When Marshal Foch heard of the signing of the Peace Treaty of Versailles he observed with singular accuracy: "This is not Peace. It is an Armistice for twenty years.

To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.

In war and policy one should always try to put oneself in the position of what Bismarck called "the Other Man". The more fully and sympathetically a Minister can do this the better are his chances of being right. The more knowledge he possesses of the opposite point of view, the less puzzling it is to know what to do. But imagination without deep and full knowledge is a snare