Quotes About Realpolitik

T]hey don't care about realpolitik or the big picture. They only care about monkey-wrenching and whistle blowing.

I felt that I was witnessing the beginnings of a great sea change in America. I was deeply moved. Through this terrible ordeal of Vietnam, I believed, we might finally see America becoming what the founding fathers had envisioned, a nation with a moral purpose in the world and a nation that cared about all its citizens. We might see the end of the cynical Nixon-Kissinger version of realpolitik. It hasn't turned out that way, but then we are all a little older and wiser.

In the United States today, the Declaration of Independence hangs on schoolroom walls, but foreign policy follows Machiavelli.

Anyone who does not see that there is a 'struggle for power' element is naïve; anyone who sees nothing but this aspect is a false realist.

No more good must be attempted than the nation can bear

The false prophets belonged to the socially and religiously acceptable institution of "professional" prophets who responded to the needs of their time. They operated from within the limited perspectives of their contemporaries: Realpolitik and vox populi.

The purpose of foreign policy is not to provide an outlet for our own sentiments of hope or indignation; it is to shape real events in a real world.

Those who sentimentally indulge humanity do it no favours.

Bush doesn't present himself as a realpolitik politician.

The Athenians were one of the most eminently practical people in history, and they made the most practical argument they could with the Melians: When you are weaker, there is nothing to be gained by fighting a useless fight. No one comes to help the weak—by doing so they would only put themselves in jeopardy. The weak are alone and must submit. Fighting gives you nothing to gain but martyrdom, and in the process a lot of people who do not believe in your cause will die.

Renaissance diplomat and courtier Niccolò Machiavelli wrote, "Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good.

The sad fact is that international politics has always been a ruthless and dangerous business, and it is likely to remain that way.

We should adopt his principles and govern men as they are and not as what we'd like them to be.

My only definition is that I am a pragmatist.

I am not Pollyannaish about the depths of the challenges we face.

Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good. Hence a prince who wants to keep his authority must learn how not to be good, and use that knowledge, or refrain from using it, as necessity requires. THE PRINCE, Niccolò Machiavelli, 1469-1527

Throughout his career, he operated in the realm of the possible, taking the world as it was, not as he wished it to be, and he often inveighed against a dogmatic insistence upon perfection.

Foreign policy is an explicitly amoral enterprise.

Die letzte Epoche der Utopie hat begonnen, und wie alle Ressourcen wird auch die Zukunft knapp. Am Ende aller Berechnungen ist sie eben keine gänzlich unbekannte mehr. Was kommt, kommt dann nicht als Utopie, sondern als Spekulationsobjekt der Realpolitik, und da die wahren Paradiese ohnehin jene sind, die wir verloren haben, stellen sich viele diese ideale Zukunft schon vor als die Wiederkehr des Vergangenen oder schlicht als Erlösung. So gesehen hat die alte Zukunft keine Zukunft.

And you have to understand this, that a prince, especially a new one, cannot observe all those things for which men are esteemed, being often forced, in order to maintain the state, to act contrary to faith, friendship, humanity, and religion. " The Prince, XVIII, 5

Thucydides said, "The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

Will did not think that was fair, but he accepted that kings were often unfair and there was naught to be done about it.

The sad fact is that international politics has always been a ruthless and dangerous business, and it is likely to remain that way.

Diplomacy amounts to nothing; it all comes down to blood and iron in the end." "Don't misquote Bismark at me.