Quotes & Sayings About Diplomacy

Diplomacy is much like the "lovemaking of elephants", which is accompanied with a lot of bellowing and other sound effects, but no one can be sure of the consequences for at least the next two years — Shashi Tharoor

Peace is war by other means. — Will Durant

Oversimplified perhaps, this in essence is the problem known to nineteenth-century diplomacy as the Eastern Question. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Don't hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft! — Theodore Roosevelt

Never in history have lies been such vital instruments of diplomacy and policy. — Max Hastings

Diplomacy is the art of telling people to go to hell in such a way that they ask for directions. — Winston S. Churchill

Maybe yelling back is a kind of marital diplomacy — Jonathan Tropper

My career was always about working with people, and understanding issues and problems and helping them to solve those issues and problems. How you deal with people - that's what diplomacy is all about. So while I'm not a career diplomat, many of the skills I had seemed to directly translate into the diplomatic arena. — John Roos

Diplomacy is the only clear answer to the current situation. There is no legal basis for referring Iran to the Security Council. But if that were to happen Iran is not afraid. — Hamid-Reza Assefi

Once the Xerox copier was invented, diplomacy died. — Andrew Young

Often I must Speak otherwise than I Think. This is Called Diplomacy. — Frank Herbert

How can you cry for others' struggles when you are facilitating mayhem in your own land? — Nilantha Ilangamuwa

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

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. — Nilantha Ilangamuwa

We got an international coalition [against Iran], and we imposed that. It was slow, patient diplomacy, nothing at all particularly headline-worthy. But then you got to the point where the negotiations - which I started and Secretary [John] Kerry completed - I think made the world safer. — Hillary Clinton

The promotion of human rights cannot be about exhortation alone. At times, it must be coupled with painstaking diplomacy. I know that engagement with repressive regimes lacks the satisfying purity of indignation. But I also know that sanctions without outreach
condemnation without discussion
can carry forward only a crippling status quo. No repressive regime can move down a new path unless it has the choice of an open door. — Barack Obama

Dexterity is one of the chief weapons of diplomacy; governments rely more upon the supremacy of this instrument, when in the hands of a skillful diplomatist, than in the soundness or justice of their claims. — James Ellis

In Asia, personal relationships are important, but you cannot personalise diplomacy. — Ananda Krishnan

War may represent the failure of diplomacy, but even the best diplomats operate on credit. Sooner or later someone who's less reasonable than you are is going to call you, and if your military can't cover your I.O.U.s, you lose. — David Weber

Architecture is a negotiated art, and it's highly political, and if you want to make buildings, there is diplomacy required. — Thom Mayne

People online will tell you what they really think - there's no diplomacy. They're honest; it's good to have the feedback immediately. — Giuseppe Zanotti

Certainly the international community is putting a lot of pressure on Iran and making clear that its nuclear program must stop. If it stops with the sanctions, the combinations of sanctions, diplomacy, other pressures, I, as the prime minister of Israel, will be the happiest person in the world. — Benjamin Netanyahu

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. — Barbara Kingsolver

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

The time draws near, when a radical change must take place for the whole world in the management of diplomacy. — Lajos Kossuth

We attach great importance to the peaceful development of cross-strait relations. But if our diplomatic relations is subject to China's goodwill, we will lose the autonomy of our diplomacy. — Tsai Ing-wen

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

And I would like current or future politicians to make sure every avenue of diplomacy, and what you have, are exhausted before sending young men and women off to death and serious injury. — Tomas Young

Such was the end of Philip (II, king of Macedonia) ... He had ruled 24 years. He is known to fame as one who with but the slenderest resources to support his claim to a throne won for himself the greatest empire among the Hellenes (Greeks), while the growth of his position was not due so much to his prowess in arms as to his adroitness and cordiality in diplomacy. — Diodorus Siculus

The art of diplomacy is the luck of knowing more of your rival's secrets than he knows of yours. — Robin Hobb

Diplomacy is seduction in another guise, Mr. Adams. One improves with practice. — Benjamin Franklin

An ambassador', quipped Sir Henry Wootton, 'is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country. — Norman Davies

Tact is the ability to step on a man's toes without messing up the shine on his shoes. — Harry Truman

My brothers are idiots.
Anyone can see that under the scars and the attitude, Isabeau is more fragile than she looks. And as a reclusive Hound princess, her first introduction to the royal family shouldn't be a dose of Hypnos and four idiots gawking at her.
If I'd managed not to gawk, they sure as hell could have. She was beautiful, fierce, and utterly unlike anyone I'd ever known.
It was really hard not to gawk.
Much better to pace outside her door with one of our Bouviers sitting at the top of the stairs watching me curiously.
"This sucks, Boudicca," I told her. "I don't think we inherited Dad's diplomacy."
She laid her chin on her paws. I could have sworn she rolled her eyes. — Alyxandra Harvey

When diplomacy ends, War begins. — Adolf Hitler

We are wanderers, place shifters, the cosmic homeless. This is not a modern truth, and Achilles is not some new kind of existentialist hero. It is the oldest truth of all, surviving uncomfortably into the modern world of cities and overkings, diplomacy and accommodation, the power structures and the proliferation of stuff which the Mediterranean world provides. — Adam Nicolson

Why are you smiling?' Gargarin asked Froi, from across the balconette. 'When you're going to have to learn a lesson in diplomacy today and choose between the gardens of two women?'
Froi laughed, his chin resting on Quintana's head, his eyes taking in the joy of his son, despite the ridiculous cap that covered the babe's head. He looked across at Lirah and Arjuro and Rafuel, and then back to Gargarin who was smiling himself, because he knew the answer to his own question.
'Because today, I think I'm leaning on the side of wonder. — Melina Marchetta

Just hear me out. While you were napping, I was busy chatting up our allies. Didn't you know
your woman's a golden-tongued ambassador! My sisters always said I graduated from the shock-and-awe school of diplomacy, but joke 'em if they can't take a fuck, right? — Kresley Cole

Diplomacy is not a veiling of the truth. It is the ability to be sensitive to the truth. — Bidemi Mark-Mordi

Am fully convinced that it is impossible for a woman, even if she were born close to a throne, to acquire before the age of five-and-twenty the encyclopaedic knowledge of trifles, the practice of manoeuvring, the important small things, the musical tones and harmony of coloring, the angelic bedevilments and innocent cunning, the speech and the silence, the seriousness and the banter, the wit and the obtuseness, the diplomacy and the ignorance which make up the perfect lady. — Honore De Balzac

Dictating to dictators doesn't work; they are congenitally delusional about their own indispensability. — Joe Klein

Haitian diplomacy will be oriented toward the influx of foreign capital, direct investments that create jobs and stimulate economic growth. — Laurent Lamothe

And we support Senator Joseph Lieberman, that it's time for our country to consider a military preemptive strike against Iran if they will not yield to diplomacy — John Hagee

Getting you a date to prom is so hard that the hypothetical idea itself is actually used to cut diamonds," I added. Radar tapped a locker twice with his fist to show his approval, and then came back with another. "Ben, getting you a date to prom is so hard that the American government believes the problem cannot be solved with diplomacy, but will instead require force. — John Green

Sanctions are not diplomacy. They are a precursor to war and an embarrassment to a country that pays lip service to free trade. — Ron Paul

You know, in the realm of diplomacy, we are all bound to defend and promote our respective national interests. But, there is also such a thing as common interests: matters where our interests converge rather than diverge, compelling us to work together rather than against one another. — Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono

By unleashing an active diplomacy on its nuclear activities, Iran has effectively neutralized the European and US policies,. — Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Words don't always work. Sometimes they come up short. Conversations can lead to conflict. There are failures of diplomacy. Some differences, for all the talk in the world, remain irreconcilable. People make empty promises, go back on their word, say things they don't believe. But connection, with ourselves and others, is the only way we can live. — Alena Graedon

Father once said the real language of diplomacy was in the space between words. — Roshani Chokshi

Diplomacy is a disguised war, in which states seek to gain by barter and intrigue, by the cleverness of arts, the objectives which they would have to gain more clumsily by means of war. — Randolph Bourne

Russia is actively using gas diplomacy for its expansion over the ex-Soviet space in a bid to become a regional superpower. — Lilia Shevtsova

Diplomacy: the art of restraining power. — Henry A. Kissinger

Diplomacy is really far less important than the stock movements within Russia. — Alan Greenspan

After using the 'good offices' of UN diplomacy (economic sanctions and weapons inspections) to ensure that Iraq was brought to its knees, its people starved, half a million of its children killed, its infrastructure severely damaged, after making sure that most of its weapons have been destroyed, in an act of cowardice that must surely be unrivalled in history, the 'Allies' / 'Coalition of the Willing' (better known as the Coalition of the Bullied and Bought) - sent in an invading army! — Arundhati Roy

Together the magicks swirled and danced around us, invisible but tangible, like an breeze. This wasn't defensive or offensive magic. It wasn't used to gather information, for strategy or diplomacy, or to fight a war against supernatural enemy.
It simply was.
It was fundamental, inexorable. It was nothing and everything, infinity and oblivion, from the magnificent furnace of a star to the electrons that hummed in an atom. It was life and death and everything in between, the urge to fight and grow and swim and fly. It was a cascade of water across boulders, the slow-moving advance of mountain glaciers, the march of time. — Chloe Neill

Let me be clear: I'm a believer in a robust military, which is essential for backing up diplomacy. But the implication is that we need a balanced tool chest of diplomatic and military tools alike. Instead, we have a billionaire military and a pauper diplomacy. The U.S. military now has more people in its marching bands than the State Department has in its foreign service - and that's preposterous. — Nicholas D. Kristof

She was the oddest combination of contradictions he'd ever met -innocence and sensuality, candour and diplomacy, anxiety and utter fearlessness. He hadn't even begun to figure out how her mind worked. But she was damn well going to live long enough for him to try. — Karen Chance

Diplomacy, if properly practiced, is not just talking for the sake of talking. — Condoleezza Rice

I have a plan. My plan is to not marry her. Diplomacy be damned. There. End of discussion. — Marissa Meyer

Once the Xerox copier was invented, private diplomacy died. There's no such thing as secrecy. It's just a question of whether it's leaked or revealed openly. — Andrew Young

1. Bangladesh.... In 1971 ... Kissinger overrode all advice in order to support the Pakistani generals in both their civilian massacre policy in East Bengal and their armed attack on India from West Pakistan.... This led to a moral and political catastrophe the effects of which are still sorely felt. Kissinger's undisclosed reason for the 'tilt' was the supposed but never materialised 'brokerage' offered by the dictator Yahya Khan in the course of secret diplomacy between Nixon and China.... Of the new state of Bangladesh, Kissinger remarked coldly that it was 'a basket case' before turning his unsolicited expertise elsewhere. — William M. Arkin

Looked at objectively, it is clear that the overwhelming majority of civilian deaths resulting from political violence are produced by what should be understood as "state terror." Terrorism also serves as an excuse to avoid diplomacy and the peaceful resolution of conflict. — Richard A. Falk

In diplomacy, like in great many other things, the rules of engagement survive only until one remarkable person decides to break them. — Ilona Andrews

MINISTER, n. An agent of a higher power with a lower responsibility. In diplomacy, an officer sent into a foreign country as the visible embodiment of his sovereign's hostility. — Ambrose Bierce

The Olympics is a time primarily for sport and celebration, but diplomacy does not stop at the door of the U.N., and for it to work, it must be sustained and consistent. — Douglas Alexander

We need to strengthen Asian diplomacy. — Ichiro Ozawa

Current public diplomacy and foreign policy making reduces the role of American citizens to mere spectators. The USIA's model of democracy and the free market is promoted as the superpower version of economic globalization, packaged and ready for shipping to clients throughout the world. In this version, foreign capital flows freely while the movement of people, particularly the world's poor, is strictly controlled. Such a commercial package speaks first and foremost for government 'partners,' the Fortune 500 corporations, which are the primary beneficiaries as well as the bankrollers of the American political process. This is a packaged story of America that is incomplete and undemocratic. Where do workers and communities fit into the story? How do private citizens play a part in building dialogue across cultures? — Nancy Snow

Diplomacy is the delicate weapon of the civilized warrior.- Hun, A. T. — Robert Asprin

It is a principle of diplomacy that one must know something of the truth in order to lie convincingly. — Tom Clancy

Diplomacy, if conducted sensibly, is a matter of small gains offset by small losses, an attempt to maintain a state of equilibrium in which catastrophes are either mitigated or, with luck, avoided entirely. — William S. Maltby

Jon had seen the lie immediately for what it was: diplomacy. He had a feeling that, given the chance, Tom would hold him close every night. Instead, the first mate chose to distance himself so as not to interfere with the captain's affection for Jon. A sacrifice. — Bey Deckard

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 — Jocelyn Murray

A wise old man taught me that diplomacy is the velvet glove that cloaks the fist of power. Persuasion, not force, works best and lasts longest. — Robin Hobb

On the other hand, she never looked as -big- as she did at that moment.
"What?" Rose demanded, glaring up at him.
The warning signal flashed bright red in Kane's head. Telling a woman she was as big as a beach ball wouldn't win any points. How did one describe how she looked? A basketball? Volleyball? He studied her furious little face. Yeah. He was in big trouble no matter what he said. Description was out of the question. He needed diplomacy, something that flew out of the window when he was near her and she said the words like contractions. — Christine Feehan

And we ought to work our diplomacy first and I think it's a reason it's going to respond increasingly to our diplomacy particularly with the president's direct involvement in the peace process, and I think that's extraordinarily important. — Frank Carlucci

Louella remarked that when foreign nations had intercourse with this country they knew they had been intercoursed. — Jack Woodford

Obama is hardly the first president to seek rapprochement with our adversaries and reconciliation with our enemies, of course. But his determination to make nice - even in the face of clear and repeated rejection from the other side - is unparalleled. For Obama and his team, diplomacy with rogue regimes is an end in itself, and any deal, however one-sided, is a win, especially one that the White House communications mavens think that friendly media will call a 'breakthrough' or 'historic.' — Stephen F. Hayes

Iran's strong logic and firm diplomacy is the guideline for all government officials in negotiations on country's peaceful nuclear program with foreigners, quite resolutely. — Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

We've made clear our view, which is we support the Russian proposal. It's within the context of the EU diplomacy aimed at getting Iran to re-suspend its enrichment activities and return to negotiations. — Joseph Adam Ereli

Globalization, far from putting an end to power diplomacy between States, has, on the contrary, intensified it. — Omar Bongo

Diplomacy is fundamentally working with people, bringing people together to deal with difficult issues. — John Roos

I think personal diplomacy has caused a lot of mischief and harm, and has impeded the progress of peace in the world. It leads to a very great fallacy - the almost pathetic belief of some Foreign Ministers - that, if they had lunch with someone and called him by his Christian name, they have changed the fundamental facts of relationship between nations. — Paul Hasluck

There is no diplomacy like candor. — E. V. Lucas

Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far. — Theodore Roosevelt

Pavel Palazchenko has given us a well-written, inside account of Gorbachev's and Shevardnadze's diplomacy. Remarkably objective, it is full of insights, makes fascinating reading, and will also be a prime source for scholars long into the future. — Jack F. Matlock Jr.

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

First of all, just because the Tea Party people appear to be generally uneducated, ignorant about the political process, ignorant about economics, confused about their own platform from the beginning, and indelicate when it comes to the craft of diplomacy, doesn't mean they're wrong. — Steven Van Zandt

Diplomacy is what is practiced after-the-fact. Never be too right too soon
as any smart Uncle will tell you. The man who guesses what will happen will be blamed for it. No one will believe he has merely guessed. — Hortense Calisher

Try to look at causes and solve problems. Do not concentrate on military solutions. Do not seek military solutions. Terrorism is a political problem. Seek political solutions. Diplomacy works. — Eqbal Ahmed

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. — Mercedes Lackey

Verification and diplomacy, used in conjunction, can be effective,. — Mohamed ElBaradei

One of my goals upon becoming Secretary of State was to take diplomacy out of capitals, out of government offices, into the media, into the streets of countries. — Hillary Clinton

Mother had the social restraint of an ambassador. — Robert A. Heinlein

Of course, it was the United States and Israel that had rejected diplomacy and the PLO that had been offering compromise for years, but Lewis's reversal of the facts was quite normal and unchallenged in the mainstream. — Noam Chomsky

I think if I had to do it over again, I'd do it the same way. I would just put more resources into getting the public diplomacy part much stronger than we were able to. — John Poindexter

Whether we report Iran to the council or not, I believe the only way forward is through diplomacy. — Mohamed ElBaradei

Buddha said: 'Hatred is never ended by hatred but by love,' and a misunderstanding is never ended by an argument but by tact, diplomacy, conciliation and a sympathetic desire to see the other person's viewpoint. — Dale Carnegie

If diplomacy has any chance to work, it must be coupled with a credible military threat. — Benjamin Netanyahu

Important part of our diplomacy is that people take our words seriously. — George W. Bush

Trying to negotiate getting a couple of kids to watch the same TV show requires serious diplomacy. — Dee Dee Myers