Quotes & Sayings About Diplomat

Who's an ex-diplomat of all people to complain if the wrapping is prettier than what's inside? — John Le Carre

In 1925 Woolf began an affair with Sackville-West, who was married to Harold Nicolson, the diplomat and writer, and the development of their close relationship, which does not seem to have undermined either woman's marriage, coincided with Woolf 's most productive years as a writer. — Jane Goldman

The basic quality for the diplomat is not intelligence but loyalty. — C. Northcote Parkinson

Suppose the elections are free and fair and those elected are racists, fascists, separatists", said the American diplomat Richard Holbrooke about Yugoslavia in 1990s. "that is the dilemma — Fareed Zakaria

A sincere diplomat is like dry water or wooden iron. — Joseph Stalin

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

We salute her for a life of remarkable achievements as an actor, as a diplomat, and most importantly as our beloved mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and adored wife for fifty-five years of the late and much missed Charles Alden Black. — Shirley Temple

A diplomat these days in nothing, but a head waiter who is allowed to sit down occasionally. — Peter Ustinov

I have to be as much diplomat as a photographer. — Alfred Eisenstaedt

The hot gossip in Washington is that Condoleezza Rice might have a new boyfriend. Secretary of State Rice is being linked to Canada's Foreign Minister, Peter MacKay. It's gotta be awkward dating a fellow diplomat. Like today, MacKay had to promise Condi he would get permission from the U.N. before he invaded her. — Jay Leno

The sheriff's job was not an easy one, and that county which, out of the grab bag of popular elections, pulled a good sheriff was lucky. It was a complicated position. The obvious duties of the sheriff - enforcing the law and keeping the peace - were far from the most important ones. It was true that the sheriff represented armed force in the county, but in a community seething with individuals a harsh or stupid sheriff did not last long. There were water rights, boundary disputes, astray arguments, domestic relations, paternity matters - All to be settled without force of arms. Only when everything else failed did a good sheriff make an arrest. The best sheriff was not the best fighter but the best diplomat. — John Steinbeck

The American Senate remained focused on domestic priorities and thwarted all expansionist projects. It kept the army small (25,000 men) and the navy weak. Until 1890, the American army ranked fourteenth in the world, after Bulgaria's, and the American navy was smaller than Italy's even though America's industrial strength was thirteen times that of Italy. America did not participate in international conferences and was treated as a second-rank power. In 1880, when Turkey reduced its diplomatic establishment, it eliminated its embassies in Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the United States. At the same time, a German diplomat in Madrid offered to take a cut in salary rather than be posted to Washington.18 — Henry Kissinger

I'd trained to be a diplomat but the state department said I was too liberal. I saw an ad in the New York Times ... a hack Californian editor came to New York to butcher some films and he needed an assistant. For some reason I read it that day and it changed my life. I went to work for him and he was horrible, butchering these masterpieces by Antonioni, Visconti, but I learned enough to know what he was doing wrong. — Thelma Schoonmaker

I do believe that in order to be a successful negotiator that as a diplomat, you have to be able to put yourself into the other person's shoes. Unless you can understand what is motivating them, you are never going to be able to figure out how to solve a particular problem. — Madeleine Albright

I'm acting for the same reasons I wanted to become a diplomat. I've thought about it a lot and concluded that I wanted to become a diplomat because it was a way to explore human nature. For the same reason that at one point in college, I wanted to be a sociologist. — Edgar Ramirez

My dad is an ambassador. My brother is a diplomat. I doubt that I could be doing anything else other than being a diplomat if I weren't in showbiz. It's in the genes! — Woody Milintachinda

I've worked as a diplomat before I became a politician. — David Cunliffe

Restraint:
"There are three things that must always act restrained.
Even five that should not use violence as their final word:
The diplomat negotiating for his lord,
The teacher instilling knowledge,
The parent dealing with exasperating children,
The officer establishing respect among the troops,
And the wronged seeking justice."
- The Order of Things, Jan Alinckbroodt,
Clinohumite poet philosopher (457 fTF - 620 fTF)(translated by D. J. Kenny) — D.J. Kenny

You can dance.
You can make me laugh.
You've got x-ray eyes.

You know how to sing.
You're a diplomat.
You've got it all.
Everybody loves you.

You can charm the birds out of the sky, But I, I've got
one thing.

You always know just what to say
And when to go,
But I've got one thing.

You can see in the dark,
But I've got one thing:
I loved you better.

Last night I woke up,
Saw this angel.
He flew in my window.
And he said,
Girl, pretty proud of yourself, huh?" And I looked around and said,
Who me?"
And he said, "The higher you fly, the faster you fall."

He said, "Send it up.
Watch it rise.
See it fall,
Gravity's rainbow.
Send it up.
Watch it rise.
See it fall,
Gravity's Angel. — Laurie Anderson

A well-trained diplomat is supposed to write French, for example, like an angel, but to speak it with the peculiar gutlessness of a Geneva nancy-boy. — Geoffrey Household

I think my father thought I might be president of the United States. I think he would've been satisfied with secretary of state. I'm a foreign policy person, and to have a chance to serve my country as the nation's chief diplomat at a time of peril and consequence, that was enough. — Condoleezza Rice

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

An ambassador is someone who thinks twice before he says nothing" -

attributed to one of India's ambassadors in Argentina at the time. — Tony Leon

I went to a very elitist, snobbish, expensive education in India, and it almost killed me. I was all set to be a diplomat, teacher, doctor - all laid out. — Bunker Roy

Donald Maclean, a British diplomat who had spied for the KGB. "Maclean said: 'People who read Pravda every day are invincible.' People who are well informed and get their information from different sources inevitably start thinking," Kalugin — Arkady Ostrovsky

There's a reason I'm not a diplomat,' I said, 'I'm better at stabbing things than negotiation.'" - Ivy Lane — Emma L. Adams

And one of the things that I learned was you can't generalise at all about a woman in a veil. You can't think you know her story, because she will confound you over and over again. She may be an engineer or a diplomat or a doctor. Or she may be an unbelievable babe with bleached hair down to her waist. — Geraldine Brooks

My family moved - first to Washington, D.C., and then, in the spring of 1975, to Lebanon, where my father worked as a diplomat at the American embassy. My parents were enthusiastic about the move, so my older brother and I felt like we were off to some place kind of cool. — Greg Kinnear

I wrote 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold' at the age of 30 under intense, unshared personal stress and in extreme privacy. As an intelligence officer in the guise of a junior diplomat at the British Embassy in Bonn, I was a secret to my colleagues, and much of the time to myself. — John Le Carre

from The Ninja and The Diplomat (coming in September 2015)--As an unintended but ineluctable consequence of the one child policy, he and his wife, like most of his generation and those succeeding, consisted of only children; hence his family included no aunts or uncles, no cousins, and no nieces or nephews. The Chinese family had lost an immeasurable dimension of richness. — Hock G. Tjoa

When he undressed at night he was like a diplomat or a judge. A white body, gentle and powerless, emerged from his clothes, his position in the world lay tumbled on the floor, fallen from his ankles ... — James Salter

A diplomat is a man who thinks twice before he says nothing. — Edward Heath

Hillary Rodham Clinton was America's chief diplomat. So let's look around at the violence and danger in our world today in every region of the world that has been infected with her flawed judgment. — Chris Christie

I'm a diplomat by nature. I help find the middle ground. I crack a joke and use humour to help resolve potentially vicious situations quickly. It gets things in perspective and helps everyone to see that things aren't as bad as they seem. — Ronnie Wood

A diplomat ... is not worthy of the name unless he can say 'no' and make the other person like it - or at least not be offended by it. — Margery Wilson

Adjectives are used as nouns ("greats," "notables"). Nouns are used as verbs ("to host"), or they are chopped off to form verbs ("enthuse," "emote"), or they are padded to form verbs ("beef up," "put teeth into"). This is a world where eminent people are "famed" and their associates are "staffers," where the future is always "upcoming" and someone is forever "firing off" a note. Nobody in America has sent a note or a memo or a telegram in years. Famed diplomat Condoleezza Rice, who hosts foreign notables to beef up the morale of top State Department staffers, sits down and fires off a lot of notes. Notes that are fired off are always fired in anger and from a sitting position. What the weapon is I've never found out. — William Zinsser

For everyone who, having no artistic sense-that is to say, no submission to subjective reality-may have the knack of reasoning about art till doomsday, especially if he be, in addition, a diplomat or financier in contact with the 'realities' of the present day, is only too ready to believe literature is an intellectual game which is destined to gradually be abandoned as time goes on. — Marcel Proust

You use to ride on the chrome horse with your diplomat, who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat. — Bob Dylan

With a diplomat father, for whom foreign postings were a fact of life, my siblings and I were expected to attend boarding schools in Britain. — Arabella Weir

People look at me as sort of a diplomat for Turkey, which by nature, I'm not; I don't want to be. It's again about that playfulness. Being Turkey's voice or representative is not playful, it's not childlike; it makes me self-conscious, kills the child in me. — Orhan Pamuk

I maintain that many an inventor, many a diplomat, many a financier is a sounder philosopher than all those who practice the dull craft of experimental psychology. — Oswald Spengler

What constitutes a good manager in this field? He must be knowledgeable in the art with which he is concerned, an impresario, labor negotiator, diplomat, educator, publicity and public relations expert, politician, skilled businessman, a social sophisticate, a servant of the community, a tireless leader - becomingly humble before authority - a teacher, a tyrant, and a continuing student of the arts. — John D. Rockefeller

Let's not freak out here," Jett said, ever the diplomat in venom green nail polish and little skull earrings. "People aren't going to come until they've had their dinner. Pie is for dessert."
Maggie and I stood behind the counter, arms folded, and stared out the display window.
Jett shook her head. Leave it to her to be remarkably upbeat while the rest of us were uncharacteristically morose. "Maybe we should open up so that this wonderful pie aroma brings them in," she said brightly. She opened the door and used it to fan the pie air out onto the street.
And it worked.
Somebody walked in. — Judith Fertig

The [Carter] administration doesn't know the difference between a diplomat and a doormat. — Ronald Reagan

Nina and Matthias?" Jesper asked. "Far be it from me to doubt anyone's professionalism, but is that really the ideal pairing?"
"Matthias knows prison procedure, and Nina can handle any guards without a noisy fight. Your job is to keep them from killing each other."
"Because I'm the diplomat of the the group?"
"There is no diplomat of the group. — Leigh Bardugo

To say that politics is not a part of sports is not being realistic. When I run, I am more than a runner. I am a diplomat, an ambassador for my country. — Filbert Bayi

My father was a diplomatic officer. As a diplomat's daughter, you have to learn to present yourself very early on. — Kathleen Turner

I wrote and finished the script for 'Man in the Middle' two weeks after the September 11 bombing. It's a very American film about an ex-diplomat based in the Middle East, a leader in the U.S. administration who now sells used cars in the Middle East. — Ziad Doueiri

I was never the diplomatic diplomat. — Adolfo Aguilar Zinser

The prominent Egyptian government minister, university professor, and writer Taha Hussein ... devoted himself to the study of pre-Islamic Arabian poetry and ended up concluding that much of that body of work had been fabricated well after the establishment of Islam in order to lend outside support to Koranic mythology ... [T]he Iranian journalist and diplomat Ali Dashti ... repeatedly took his fellow Muslims to task for not questioning the traditional accounts of Muhammad's life, much of which he called myth-making and miracle-mongering. — Toby Lester

A diplomat who says "yes" means "maybe", a diplomat who says "maybe" means "no", and a diplomat who says "no" is no diplomat. — Charles Maurice De Talleyrand-Perigord

God, a born extremist, is the diplomat's worst enemy. Quite apart from the fact that His decrees are irrevocable, the Absolute will not allow anyone to relativize matters. — Regis Debray

A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age. — Robert Frost

I must say I've rarely been described as 'diplomat.' — Richard Armitage

A Soviet diplomat, like a skilled chess player, does not expect his opposite number to give up something for nothing, not even a pawn. — Arthur Dean

An American diplomat is sometimes like a bull who carries his own china shop around with him. — Winston Churchill

His mother's father had been a diplomat, an architect of fortunes; his father's father had been an architect, a diplomat of styles. — Maggie Stiefvater

What happens if you need a diplomat who can also practice philosophy fight with a lightsaber and levitate small objects Who else are you going to call but us

Mara — Walter Jon Williams

I was a political science major in college and dreamed of being a diplomat. — Rachel Platten

Right, well I am, I was a career diplomat for 37 years from 1960 until 1997 during the early 1980s from 1981 to 1985 I was the United States Ambassador to Honduras. — John Negroponte

I'm simply saying that there are advantages in sending a skilled diplomat who can always say, 'I'll get back to you on that, Mr. Minister'. — Theodore C. Sorensen

It might seem that being a genius is a golden ticket to a life of glamorous soirees with the intellectual elite, champagne flute in hand, arm candy at your side, surrounded by a throng of smiling sycophants. But you might be confusing this scene with the lifestyle of a diplomat — Andre De Guillaume

My father was a diplomat for part of his life and I jumped from country to country and culture to culture. — Walter Salles

The presentation of mathematics in schools should be psychological and not systematic. The teacher, so to speak, should be a diplomat. He must take account of the psychic processes in the boy in order to grip his interest, and he will succeed only if he presents things in a form intuitively comprehensible. A more abstract presentation is only possible in the upper classes. — Felix Klein

It's a necessary quality of a diplomat or a politician that he will compromise. Uncompromising politicians or diplomats get you into the most terrible trouble. — John Keegan

The smile is civilization's finest adornment. It signifies the willpower and duty to fashion mankind's coexistence as quietly and agreeably as possible so that it will always appear friendly. For it is all a matter of appearance. The smile is culture's diploma: it is the diplomat's badge. — Iwan Goll

Rolf Ekeus, his appearance can deceive. He looks somewhere between an international diplomat and a mad professor. He's got that sort of shock of white hair and a slightly absent-minded way of speaking. But he's extremely sharp and very serious about power relationships. — Barton Gellman

A diplomat is a person who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip. — Caskie Stinnett

For me, the day job comes first. That's why I call myself a diplomat who writes, not a writer who masquerades as a diplomat. If the day job demands it, I won't write at all. I write in what I call 'the crevices of my day job', and that comes only on weekends. — Vikas Swarup

Michael Anthony is the Diplomat of Rock N Roll. He is the regular guy. — Gary Cherone

From where I stood it was a pose that collapsed many periods in her life into one: mother and lover, big sister, best friend, superstar and diplomat, billionaire and street kid, foolish girl and woman of substance. — Zadie Smith

When a diplomat says 'yes' he means 'maybe.' When a diplomat says 'maybe' he means 'no.' But if a diplomat says 'no' he's no diplomat. — Alan Furst

I'd like to think the best bunker buster is a diplomat. — Scott Ritter

My style hasn't changed much in all these sixty years. I still use, most of the time, existing light and try not to push people around. I have to be as much a diplomat as a photographer. People don't often take me seriously because I carry so little equipment and make so little fuss ... I never carried a lot of equipment. My motto has always been, "Keep it simple". — Alfred Eisenstaedt

My dad was a diplomat and after living in America, where I was born, he was posted to Cairo. — Arabella Weir

These, gentlemen, are my rules: if I don't succeed, I keep trying; if I do succeed, I keep quiet; and in any case I don't undermine anyone. I'm not an intriguer, and I'm proud of it. I wouldn't make a good diplomat. They also say, gentlemen, that the bird flies to the fowler. That's true, and I'm ready to agree: but who is the fowler here, and who is the bird? That's still a question, gentlemen! — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

We grew up as poor people but we never knew poverty. I still love and miss the Somalia I grew up in. Things changed, when my father became a diplomat later on. — Iman Abdulmajid

In order to be a diplomat, one must speak a number of languages, including doubletalk. — Carey Williams

To the furniture worker's child in North Carolina who wants to become a doctor or a scientist, an engineer or an entrepreneur, a diplomat or even a president
that's the future we hope for. That's the vision we share. That's where we need to go
forward — Barack Obama

Most uncomfortable! Did we lose anyone? Head count! Lee Ark, Leetu, and Brunstetter. Three. Should we count the meech egg? No, I think not. Don't drop it, Brunstetter. I'm to take it home and raise it. Ridiculous. Being a parent at my age. Where were we? Oh, yes, three. One o'rant, two kimens, two minor dragons. Eight. A librarian and a diplomat. Ten. — Donita K. Paul

Mexican writer and diplomat, "Pasado en claro" ("A Draft of Shadows") You learn something the day you die. You learn how to die. — Katherine Anne Porter

To prove to [her friend, Swedish diplomat Count] Gyllenborg that she was not superficial, Catherine composed an essay about herself, "so that he would see whether I knew myself or not." The next day, she wrote and handed to Gyllenborg an essay titled 'Portrait of a Fifteen-Year-Old Philosopher.' He was impressed and returned it with a dozen pages of comments, mostly favorable. "I read his remarks again and again, many times [Catherine later recalled in her memoirs]. I impressed them on my consciousness and resolved to follow his advice. In addition, there was something else surprising: one day, while conversing with me, he allowed the following sentence to slip out: 'What a pity that you will marry! I wanted to find out what he meant, but he would not tell me. — Robert K. Massie

Diplomats negotiate. That's what I do on my show. So I consider myself a diplomat in showbiz. — Woody Milintachinda

If a diplomat says yes, he means perhaps. If he says perhaps he means no. And if he says no, he's the hell of a diplomat. — Agnes Sligh Turnbull

Born Berlin 1931, Germany, father a British diplomat, mother an American artist. Educated at various schools all over the world. 1958 Settled down to live in London. 1966 Became interested in photography through photographing my young children. No formal training. — Fay Godwin

I majored in political communications, so I intended to be a diplomat. — Edgar Ramirez

After reading Tolstoy's lengthy essay "On Life" in 1889, Ernest Crosby, a thirty-three-year-old American diplomat who was working in Egypt at the time, decided that diplomacy wasn't his calling and instead dedicated the next twenty-seven years of his life to writing and lecturing about Tolstoy throughout the United States. — Leo Tolstoy

A jazz musician is a combination orator, dialectician, mathematician, athlete, entertainer, poet, singer, dancer, diplomat, educator, student, comedian, artist, seducer, public masturbator, and general all-round good fellow. — Steve Lacy

Richard Holbrooke is known for many things, but I will remember him as an impressive, sometimes even intimidating diplomat who understood the value of culture in diplomacy. — Cynthia P. Schneider

Even when I was at CIA, I'd go to visit foreign leaders and I'd say, 'You know, I'm not a diplomat. I'm just an old CIA guy' ... I said, 'If I wanted to be diplomatic, I'd have been a diplomat.' — Robert M. Gates

You're Piers Brandon, the Marquess of Granville, diplomat and secret agent in the Crown's service." She ran a fingertip down the noble slope of his nose. "And I'm Char - "
Her words were lost in a gasp.

With the speed and strength of a whip, he had her turned on her back, sprawled beneath him on the tufted carriage seat.
"You will be Lady Charlotte Brandon, the Marchioness of Granville, diplomat's wife and mother of my heir."
.......
"You'll be mine," he murmured. "I swear it, Charlotte. I will make you mine. — Tessa Dare

For, as the German diplomat and philosopher Max Scheler wrote, "He who has not, as it were, looked into the abyss of the absolute Nothing will completely overlook the eminently positive content of the realization that there is something rather than nothing." Let us, then, dip briefly into that abyss, with full assurance that we will not come up empty-handed. For, as the old saying goes: Nothing seek, nothing find. — Jim Holt

My father was the Prime Minister of Pakistan. My grandfather had been in politics, too; however, my own inclination was for a job other than politics. I wanted to be a diplomat, perhaps do some journalism - certainly not politics. — Benazir Bhutto

No wonder this man was a diplomat. You couldn't trust him an inch, he thought in loops, and you couldn't help liking him despite it. — Terry Pratchett

A really good diplomat does not go in for victories, even when he wins them. — Walter Lippmann

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. — Stephen M. Walt

Only men of considerable vanity write books; consistently therewith, I worried lest the world were exchanging an irreplaceable author for a more easily purchased diplomat. — John Kenneth Galbraith

While my father was a diplomat rather than a business person, I count him as a critically important formative role model. He was comfortable living and working all around the world, wherever he was assigned. — Muhtar Kent

Show me one Iranian diplomat we killed! I can show you many Saudi diplomats who were killed by Iran. — Adel Al-Jubeir

On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarreling, fighting, burning and torturing one another for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind. Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President, author, scientist, architect, educator, and diplomat — George Washington