Business Diplomacy Quotes & Sayings

Poverty is good for nothing, except perhaps for football. — Jorge Valdano

The [Dow-Alcoa and Alcoa-IG] negotiations [of 1929] reveal strikingly the technique of cartel diplomacy - the steady application of "pressure" and the resort alternatively to challenges and blandishments. The similarity to power politics in which trial by battle is a last resort is marked. The procedure discloses the vast gulf between big business in practice and the patterns of behavior assumed in a regime of free competition. It shows how the conference table superseded the market as the arena for decision making. — George W. Stocking

Somebody must trespass on the taboos of modern nationalism, in the interests of human reason. Business can't. Diplomacy won't. It has to be people like us. — Robert Byron

The dilemma of our age is the combination of unprecedented material progress and systematic spiritual decline. The decline in public and private morality can be witnessed in the marketplace as well as the forums of international diplomacy. In the past, a man's honor and reputation were his most valuable assets. Business agreements were made with a handshake. Today one might be well advised to check the "bottom line" and read the "small print." — King Hussein I

Self-pity is the most destructive of all narcotics. — Sebastian Horsley

Once war was considered the business of soldiers, international relations the concern of diplomats. But now that war has become seemingly total and seemingly permanent, the free sport of kings has become the forced and internecine business of people, and diplomatic codes of honor between nations have collapsed. Peace in no longer serious; only war is serious. Every man and every nation is either friend or foe, and the idea of enmity becomes mechanical, massive, and without genuine passion. When virtually all negotiation aimed at peaceful agreement is likely to be seen as 'appeasement,' if not treason, the active role of the diplomat becomes meaningless; for diplomacy becomes merely a prelude to war an interlude between wars, and in such a context the diplomat is replaced by the warlord. — C. Wright Mills

At school I had only admirers; I had no friends. — V.S. Naipaul

A collection is not just one basic idea. It comes from something that is in the air, something you suddenly like and put down on paper and then work out. — Karl Lagerfeld

Self-centredness thus enabling every human being to see the universe spread out in descending tiers beneath himself who is its lord, — Marcel Proust

Tact and diplomacy are fine in international relations, in politics, perhaps even in business; in science only one thing matters, and that is the facts. — Hans Eysenck

You know, you can only throw in so many haymakers before one misses and you get knocked out. — Andy Roddick

Although all the major industrial countries and a multitude of business units participate in the world trade in chemicals, the forces of free competition do not rule the world markets. The techniques of business diplomacy frequently supplement and in some instances have supplanted independent decision making by separate producers in response to free market forces. The geographic and industrial areas within which particular companies will operate, the scale of their output, the prices of their products, the use or nonuse of their technology, have increasingly become objects of negotiation, subjects of national and international agreement. More and more the conference table has been taking the place of the market as a regulator if the chemical industries. — George W. Stocking

It's an act of faith to be a writer in a post literate world. — Rita Mae Brown

The most successful cultural diplomacy strategy integrates people-to-people or arts/culture/media-to-people interactions into the basic business of diplomacy. The programs in Afghanistan, Egypt, and Iran all contribute to core goals of U.S. policy in those countries. — Cynthia P. Schneider

I would rather instill in my amateur students love, than knowledge, of music. Left with only knowledge, they will at the end close their books and consign the course to forgetfulness. But if they have learned to love but the smallest part of the art, they are likely to pursue some phase of it the rest of their lives. — Ernst Bacon

Not all the subtilties of metaphysics can make me doubt a moment of the immortality of the soul, and of a beneficent Providence. I feel it, I believe it, I desire it, I hope it, and will defend it to my last breath. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

When I run in Ethiopia, I look out and see eucalyptus trees and rivers. — Haile Gebrselassie

The Montreal Protocol is a model of cooperation. It is a product of the recognition and international consensus that ozone depletion is a global problem, both in terms of its causes and its effects. The protocol is the result of an extraordinary process of scientific study, negotiations among representatives of the business and environmental communities, and international diplomacy. It is a monumental achievement. — Ronald Reagan

Some people blow their top, but all people blow their bottom. — Evan Esar

A great nation like the United States has many and varied interests, and we need both to do business with tyrants and to engage constantly in multilateral diplomacy. — Elliott Abrams

In sport, as in science, business, and diplomacy, as Scots we understand that we benefit from the deep and diverse partnerships that make up the United Kingdom. — Douglas Alexander