Best 176 quotes in «diplomacy quotes» category

Nothing can be changed in the system when the system itself is revolting against those who opposed violence.

Now is not the time to look at the past. Lets look forward to the future. Diplomats know very well that these are standard slogans for those who are engaged in serious crimes.

Peace is war by other means.

One story that circulated about (U.S. Minister to Russia Charles S.) Todd concerned his conversation with a lady-in-waiting at an Imperial reception in the Winter Palace. In his bad French with a Kentucky accent, he mispronounced the word for year, so that an explanation of his travels came out: "I was an ass in Paris, part of an ass in London, almost an ass in Germany, and I am two asses here." To which the lady reportedly responded, "And you will be an ass wherever you go.

On the question of the machinery of government, we have seen that a good deal of our trouble seems to have stemmed from the extent to which the executive has felt itself beholden to the short-term trends of public opinion in the country and from what we might call the erratic and subjective nature of public reaction to foreign-policy questions. I would like to emphasize that I do not consider public reaction to foreign-policy questions to be erratic and undependable over the long term; but I think the record indicates that in the short term our public opinion, or what passes for public opinion in the thinking of official Washington, can be easily led astray into areas of emotionalism and subjectivity which make a poor and inadequate guide for national action.

Peale akvarellmaali pole ühtki teist tegevust, mis oleks amatööridele nii ligitõmbav, kui diplomaatia.

Pierre J. Huss pleased me with his comment: "Thanks to him (Romulo) the United Nations has 'independence' in its Charter, one of the most important contributions for the evolution of humanity to dignity and freedom.

People who keep their feelings to themselves tend not to know, after a while, what their feelings are.

Oh, diplomacy," said M.D., in his element, "it mops up war's spillages; legitimizes its outcomes; gives the strong state the means to impose its will on a weaker one, while saving its fleets and battalions for weightier opponents.

Pick a leader who will make their citizens proud. One who will stir the hearts of the people, so that the sons and daughters of a given nation strive to emulate their leader's greatness. Only then will a nation be truly great, when a leader inspires and produces citizens worthy of becoming future leaders, honorable decision makers and peacemakers. And in these times, a great leader must be extremely brave. Their leadership must be steered only by their conscience, not a bribe.

Playing pool with Korean officials one evening in the Koryo Hotel, which has become the nightspot for foreign businessmen and an increasing number of diplomats (to say nothing of the burgeoning number of spies and journalists traveling under second identities), I was handed that day's edition of the Pyongyang Times. At first glance it seemed too laughable for words: endless pictures of the 'Dear Leader'—Little Boy's exalted title—as he was garlanded by adoring schoolchildren and heroic tractor drivers. Yet even in these turgid pages there were nuggets: a telegram congratulating the winner of the Serbian elections; a candid reference to the 'hardship period' through which the country had been passing; an assurance that a certain nuclear power plant would be closed as part of a deal with Washington. Tiny cracks, to be sure. But a complete and rigid edifice cannot afford fissures, however small. There appear to be no hookers, as yet, in Pyongyang. Yet if casinos come, can working girls be far behind? One perhaps ought not to wish for hookers, but there are circumstances when corruption is the only hope.

Rolf Ekeus came round to my apartment one day and showed me the name of the Iraqi diplomat who had visited the little West African country of Niger: a statelet famous only for its production of yellowcake uranium. The name was Wissam Zahawi. He was the brother of my louche gay part-Kurdish friend, the by-now late Mazen. He was also, or had been at the time of his trip to Niger, Saddam Hussein's ambassador to the Vatican. I expressed incomprehension. What was an envoy to the Holy See doing in Niger? Obviously he was not taking a vacation. Rolf then explained two things to me. The first was that Wissam Zahawi had, when Rolf was at the United Nations, been one of Saddam Hussein's chief envoys for discussions on nuclear matters (this at a time when the Iraqis had functioning reactors). The second was that, during the period of sanctions that followed the Kuwait war, no Western European country had full diplomatic relations with Baghdad. TheVatican was the sole exception, so it was sent a very senior Iraqi envoy to act as a listening post. And this man, a specialist in nuclear matters, had made a discreet side trip to Niger. This was to suggest exactly what most right-thinking people were convinced was not the case: namely that British intelligence was on to something when it said that Saddam had not ceased seeking nuclear materials in Africa. I published a few columns on this, drawing at one point an angry email from Ambassador Zahawi that very satisfyingly blustered and bluffed on what he'd really been up to. I also received—this is what sometimes makes journalism worthwhile—a letter from a BBC correspondent named Gordon Correa who had been writing a book about A.Q. Khan. This was the Pakistani proprietor of the nuclear black market that had supplied fissile material to Libya, North Korea, very probably to Syria, and was open for business with any member of the 'rogue states' club. (Saddam's people, we already knew for sure, had been meeting North Korean missile salesmen in Damascus until just before the invasion, when Kim Jong Il's mercenary bargainers took fright and went home.) It turned out, said the highly interested Mr. Correa, that his man Khan had also been in Niger, and at about the same time that Zahawi had. The likelihood of the senior Iraqi diplomat in Europe and the senior Pakistani nuclear black-marketeer both choosing an off-season holiday in chic little uranium-rich Niger… well, you have to admit that it makes an affecting picture. But you must be ready to credit something as ridiculous as that if your touching belief is that Saddam Hussein was already 'contained,' and that Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair were acting on panic reports, fabricated in turn by self-interested provocateurs.

Por donde sea que el estandarte de la libertad y la independencia se haya desplegado o se vaya a desplegar, ahí estarán su corazón, sus bendiciones y sus plegarias. Pero no irán a ultramar en busca de monstruos que destruir. Desearán la libertad y la independencia de todos, pero sólo serán paladines y justificadores de sí mismos.

She is opinionated, as most of us are, but you won’t find yourself impaled on her arguments; she doesn’t charge at you as some people do. What [she] does is walk slowly and steadily into a conversational battle, somehow managing to deflect all incoming targets until she is standing in your corner with her flag dug firmly into the ground. I think it comes from the deep-seated confidence she possesses in her core. I think it is the powerful combination of encouraged individualism and a strong family unit.

Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.

[T]hat afternoon, Sergei Lavrov called me for the second time during the crisis. [...] “We have three demands,” he said. “What are they?” I asked. “The first two are that the Georgians sign the no-use-of-force pledge and that their troops return to barracks,” he told me. “Done,” I answered. [...] But then Sergei said, “The other demand is just between us. Misha Saakashvili has to go.” I couldn’t believe my ears and I reacted out of instinct, not analysis. “Sergei, the secretary of state of the United States does not have a conversation with the Russian foreign minister about overthrowing a democratically elected president,” I said. “The third condition has just become public because I’m going to call everyone I can and tell them that Russia is demanding the overthrow of the Georgian president.” “I said it was between us,” he repeated. “No, it’s not between us. Everyone is going to know.” The conversation ended. I called Steve Hadley to tell him about the Russian demand. Then I called the British, the French, and several others. That afternoon the UN Security Council was meeting. I asked our representative to inform the Council as well. Lavrov was furious, saying that he’d never had a colleague divulge the contents of a diplomatic conversation. I felt I had no choice. If the Georgians wanted to punish Saakashvili for the war, they would have a chance to do it through their own constitutional processes. But the Russians had no right to insist on his removal. The whole thing had an air of the Soviet period, when Moscow had controlled the fate of leaders throughout Eastern Europe. I was certainly not going to be party to a return to those days [688].

That our best minds have been misinformed, that they will continue to misunderstand, is given. In consequence, the West’s position will continue to erode away. This is not seen, however, because today’s prevailing mode of thought sees the future as an extension of today’s normal life. From this perspective it does indeed appear that Russia has suffered a defeat. Russia’s economy has suffered and Russia has lost diplomatic prestige. But Moscow has not changed course because Russia is not trying to preserve today’s “normal life,” and diplomatic prestige is not as important as nuclear supremacy. The sum of diplomatic approval from militarily ineffectual countries is of no value. Temporary economic losses are meaningless. If strategic nuclear supremacy is acquired, the world can beg for negotiations as Gen. Krebs begged General Chuikov. But negotiations will not take place. Only surrender will take place.

That’s the key to walking through the Wall.... You have to first see it as not being a Wall, even though everyone you know still sees it as a Wall.

The Americans love to play diplomacy by making scares. It's a crude method.

The art of diplomacy is often to tell someone you want to be their best friend, but failing that, you might have to destroy them. It’s kind of like Christianity. Congressman Lance Boyd.

The bargaining position of the victor always diminishes with time. Whatever is not exacted during the shock of defeat becomes increasingly difficult to attain later.

The Chilcot report is a revelation of injustice under the cloak of Aid. The Chilcot report is a sorry report on the current state of humanity. So the ultimate question here is – what are we going to achieve out of the sorry reports when “sorry” has no meaning in action?

The Communist leaders respect only firmness and have contempt for persons who continually give in to them.

The "compleat diplomat" of the future should remain cognizant of realism's emphasis on the inescapable role of power, keep liberalism's awareness of domestic forces in mind, and occasionally reflect on constructivism's vision of change.

The diplomatic kids had a hectic sort of life, being constantly thrown from one end of the world to the other and always playing tennis, no matter who was being machine-gunned in the streets, you were always extraterritorial, history was not permitted to touch you, it was only buzzing around your tennis court in a bloody sort of way. You were so well protected that you went to pieces. Diplomatic immunity could do very strange things to you, it was like weightlessness. You had to remind yourself constantly that you actually existed, and you were not supposed to identify yourself too much with the suffering of whatever country you were posted to. But then, who needs reality anyway?

The mentality of being the super power globally or regionally has contributed strongly to the development of very negative aspects to the political cohabitation the countries of the region than proving the capability of producing solutions that would meet the needs of the public.

The most difficult task in leadership, which is one of the greatest challenges is the task of finding the reins of the soul.

The most fundamental problem is not that we don’t have a system to run but those with knowledge are cynically manipulating the system for petty personal desires.

The price of greatness is perform stately duties.

The presidency of the United Nations was not thrust upon me overnight. I had to grow up to the measurements it demanded of a proponent of peace. This was done session by session, step by step. It entailed trips halfway around the world, again and again. It demanded nights without sleep, studying, writing, poring over documents; days without rest; and always the curb on the temper and the willingness to give and to receive.

The Saudi experience with IBI, though brief, proved instrumental and became a model for how the Saudis went on to conduct business. Saudi Arabia understood that it lacked the resources of more developed nations. These included a large population, an educated populace, capital, credit, and native businesses. What Saudi Arabia realized it did have was an immense quantity of a very desirable resource: petroleum. Because it lacked so many resources, it could not drill for, extract, refine, transport, or sell that petroleum on its own. It needed outside firms to access the value of the petroleum, at least initially.

The sea is a lonely and hostile place, Captain,' Jansen said coldly. 'It is always best not to make enemies of those who might be your friends. You never know when your ships may cross

This exchange is what an unconditional surrender sounds like. It is the ultimate form of diplomatic coercion. The city of Berlin had been turned into rubble. The defeated country was at the mercy of its enemy. Coercion was the means by which unconditional surrender was obtained. Under the circumstances, diplomatic prowess was meaningless. Only military superiority mattered. A few hours after the unsuccessful negotiation attempt, Chancellor Joseph Goebbels committed suicide. On the next day, 2 May 1945, Gen. Hans Krebs, Chief of the General Staff (OKH), also committed suicide. The above conversation is noteworthy for two things: (1) The Russian side had the power to exterminate the German side, and (2) there was absolutely no negotiation or diplomacy. Valeriano and Maness would do well to review the conversation between Krebs and Chuikov. In a future war the victorious side will dictate the peace to the defeated side in the exact manner described above. This stems from the nature of modern weapons. Such weapons are made to produce decisive results. They are made to engender capitulation and stop all arguments, all negotiations, all half-measures. Atomic bombs were used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The result was the surrender of Japan. Diplomatic power is weak when compared to atomic power. In fact, the illusions of diplomatic power must work against those states that favor negotiation over and above measures strictly undertaken to assure military success.

Try to be pleasant to one another, get plenty of fresh air, read a good book now and then, depose your government when it suspends the free press, try to use the mechanism of the state to adjudicate fairly and employ diplomatic means wherever possible to avoid armed conflict.

Tyranny turns us into liars, she thought, hating herself even as she applauded.

...unlike Champions, Godmothers don't have to keep undergoing ridiculous ordeals every time one turns around. Our idea of besting a dragon is not to chop it into bits, but to get it to sit down to tea.

V holandských koloniích žádní čerti nejsou; jsou-li nějací, tedy ve francouzských. kapitán J. van Toch

Remember, there is no peace without peaceful exchange.

Such diplomacy is not to be sneezed at, for the suit is a window to the soul: lightweight cotton when cash is tight, Italian cashmere when an inheritance lands; waistlines drawn in during illness or anxiety, and let out at times of excess. Weddings, funerals, christenings, and court appearances—all of life's landmarks are sanctified, quietly and confidentially, by one's tailor.

The French, it seems to me, strike a happy balance between intimacy and reserve. Some of this must be helped by the language, which lends itself to graceful expression even when dealing with fairly basic subjects.... And there's that famously elegant subtitle from a classic Western. COWBOY: "Gimme a shot of red-eye." SUBTITLE: "Un Dubonnet, s'il vous plait." No wonder French was the language of diplomacy for all those years.

The message from too many Democrats and Republicans alike remains that we should not let facts get in the way of our day-dreams. It's so much easier to fantasize about an alternative and ideal world, rather than making the hard and unpopular decisions that are necessary to deal with the complicated and frustrating one in which we live. It is so much easier to imagine that world as a blank slate on which America can draw as it wishes, rather than to recognize that limits on American power, and recalibrate strategy accordingly. If Americans fail to reexamine their fundamental attitudes toward that world, then the risk for the future is that failure in Iraq will make the United States more cautious, but not wiser.

the very least we can live with is an agreement that does not reduce us to slaves of imposition, but makes us partners of consent. Yes, we are compelled to make peace, we submit to force majeure, but leave us at least a piece of clothing to cover our nudity. This is the motivation behind every formula of diplomatic contrivance that is sometimes described as face-saving, and wise indeed is the victor who knows that, in order to shield his own rear from the elements, he must not denude his opponents.

This proved to me that no matter how diametrically opposed your views may be from another's if you can succeed in knowing him as a human being you can understand each other.

To stomp about the world ignoring cultural differences is arrogant, to be sure, but perhaps there is another kind of arrogance in the presumption that we may ever really build a faultless bridge from one shore to another, or even know where the mist has ceded to landfall.

War, they say, is the answer of those who have no arguments left.

Válka je jen pokračování diplomacie jinými prostředky.

We have war when at least one of the partes to a conflict wants something more than it wants peace.

We're instant ambassadors. Just add robot body and voila! If they'd told us anything real, they might have had to kill us.

What a shame swear words aren't allowed in diplomacy.

What happened to the missing prisoners? How did these men and boys end up in such a tomb, in such a place? And, a question no one inside the US government wanted to touch for more than a decade after: What did the Americans on the ground know and see as the earth was moved and the grave was filled with body after body? We made a deal with Dostum for the territory he could take for us, for the blood he could spill of enemies we shared. What was the price? What did we give up when we shook his hand? How did all the talk of smaller footprints and partner forces hold up against a femur sticking out of the dirt? These were familiar ethical quandaries in America's national-security-sensitive alliances. But, like the smell in the desert, they had become unusually hard to ignore here.