Quotes About Diplomacy

Sir Howard Kennard, the British ambassador, was heard to lament that Hitler's rise had taken all the satisfaction out of diplomacy. "Being an ambassador used to be a gentleman's job," he said. "Now it's a question of fighting with gangsters. . . . You might as well try to make a deal with Al Capone.

Unlike Churchill, FDR showed little concern about a pro-Soviet government taking control in Poland after the war. Indeed, in the spring of 1944, he told Averell Harriman, the U.S. ambassador to Moscow, that he "didn't care whether the countries bordering Russia became communized.

Roosevelt had belittled his closest ally, a man who greatly admired him. In the process, the president sent a very different message than he intended. How could the ever suspicious Stalin be expected to trust these men when they showed no loyalty to each other?

By all accounts, Stalin, who was both prepared and well organized, was easily the best negotiator of the three leaders. American and British officials marveled at his mastery of the details of military operations and diplomatic issues. Indeed, many years later, Anthony Eden wrote: "If I had to pick a team for going into a conference room, Stalin would be my first choice.

Wrote Kennan after the war: "The truth is—there is no avoiding it— that Franklin Roosevelt, for all his charm and for all his skill as a political leader, was, when it came to foreign policy, a very superficial man, ignorant, dilettantish, with a severely limited intellectual horizon.

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, thousands of desperate Jews lined up each day in front of U.S. consulates in Germany, Austria, and other Nazi-controlled countries to apply for visas. However, with little sentiment in America for providing them with a means of escape, almost all were turned away.

Services rendered to a country in a diplomatic line can be known only to a few – if they are important and they become conspicuous they rather excite envy than gratitude.

I want to keep the peace. I want to be gentle, not confrontational.

The fewer blows, the better. Brave men fight if they must; wise men never fight if they can help it.

You know, we've got to do it someday... throw away all the guns and invite all the jokers from the North and the South in here to a cocktail party... last man standing on his feet at the end wins the war.

Another U.S. official disturbed by the prospect of a Washington-Tokyo truce was the Treasury's Harry Dexter White. "Persons in our government," White declaimed, "are hoping to betray the cause of the heroic Chinese people.

It's beginning to sound like the part we play is 'mediator'," Vasiht'h said, the mindline tacky with the memory of embarrassment, like something spilled and left without cleaning. "Goddess knows I've untangled enough squabbles in my family to know sometimes what you really need is a third party to translate.

Beijing has organised for itself the best of all three worlds: First World armed power, Second World economic strength and Third World handouts.

The plan was typical of the way the German officer corps had come to see strategic problems in a vacuum, entirely from their narrow viewpoint, and without recourse to the nuances of diplomacy or the needs of politics.

German aggression tended to backfire,

Of all the inventions that have helped to unify China perhaps the airplane is the most outstanding. Its ability to annihilate distance has been in direct proportion to its achievements in assisting to annihilate suspicion and misunderstanding among provincial officials far removed from one another or from the officials at the seat of government.

The U.N. bureaucracy has grown to elephantine proportions. Now that the Cold War is over, we are asking that elephant to do gymnastics.

If we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future.

Maybe if everybody in leadership was a woman, you might not get into the conflicts in the first place. But if you watch the women who have made it to the top, they haven't exactly been non-aggressive - including me.

I think the personal relationships I established mattered in terms of what I was able to get done. And I did bring women's issues to the center of our foreign policy.

I am often asked if, when I was secretary, I had problems with foreign men. That is not who I had problems with, because I arrived in a very large plane that said United States of America. I had more problems with the men in our own government.

But I do not believe that the world would be entirely different if there were more women leaders. Maybe if everybody in leadership was a woman, you might not get into the conflicts in the first place. But if you watch the women who have made it to the top, they haven't exactly been non-aggressive - including me.

No matter what message you are about to deliver somewhere, whether it is holding out a hand of friendship, or making clear that you disapprove of something, is the fact that the person sitting across the table is a human being, so the goal is to always establish common ground.

A spoonful of sugar can be as helpful in dealing with foreign diplomats as it is in child psychology, for these are not unrelated fields.