Quotes & Sayings About Foreign Affairs

I believe the first draft of a book - even a long one - should take no more than three months ... Any longer and - for me, at least - the story begins to take on an odd foreign feel, like a dispatch from the Romanian Department of Public Affairs, or something broadcast on high-band shortwave duiring a period of severe sunspot activity. — Stephen King

For years now, long before I became House majority leader, I have been passionate about foreign affairs because I believe that anyone who leads in Washington must appreciate the significance of America's role in providing for global security and prosperity. — Kevin McCarthy

said Yitzhak Rabin, addressing the first full meeting of the Israeli Cabinet since the crisis had begun on Sunday, 'I want to say that any information that leaks out today can end up costing lives. So I ask you not to behave normally regarding this issue.' In other words, speak to no one. An hour and a half earlier he had met with Yitzhak Navon, the chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs — Saul David

I don't think you lose anything by hallucinating. It's cheaper than airfare, the destinations more interesting, and I'd rather have a mutant squid on my window than the State Department trying to do foreign affairs. — Fred Reed

The true theory of our Constitution is surely the wisest and best, that the States are independent as to everything within themselves, and united as to everything respecting foreign affairs. Let the General Government be reduced to foreign concerns only, and let our affairs be disentangled from those of all other nations, except as to commerce, which the merchants will manage the better, the more they are left free to manage for themselves, and our General Government may be reduced to a very simple organization, and a very inexpensive one; a few plain duties to be performed by a few servants. — Thomas Jefferson

I've always had a weakness for foreign affairs. — Mae West

People are always asking me in interviews, 'What do you think of foreign affairs?' I just say, 'I've had a few.' — Dolly Parton

None of what we [as country] have done is credited. None of the good works. Our foreign affairs budget, foreign aid budget, none of it is ever thanked. — Rush Limbaugh

This solid permanence in Foreign Office affairs had always antagonized MacGregor: there was something threatening and deadly and over-sure in it. The building itself was far more flexible and animate than its regular and eternal inhabitants who demanded such rigid conformity of anyone entering the kingdom. No one could enter the Foreign Office with a contradiction to it and have his conviction untouched and unshaken. This was a n atmosphere of such self-conviction and God-like authority that any rival opinion was shattered in the contact. — James Aldridge

The U.S. public should not learn that "state policies are overwhelmingly regressive, thus reinforcing and expanding social inequality," though designed in ways that lead "people to think that the government helps only the undeserving poor, allowing politicians to mobilize and exploit anti-government rhetoric and values even as they continue to funnel support to their better-off constituents" - I'm quoting here from the main establishment journal, Foreign Affairs, not from some radical rag. — Noam Chomsky

Of all the joint ventures in which we might engage, the most productive, in my view, is educational exchange. I have always had great difficulty-since the initiation of the Fulbright scholarships in 1946-in trying to find the words that would persuasively explain that educational exchange is not merely one of those nice but marginal activities in which we engage in international affairs, but rather, from the standpoint of future world peace and order, probably the most important and potentially rewarding of our foreign-policy activities. — J. William Fulbright

In foreign affairs we must make up our minds that, whether we wish it or not, we are a great people and must play a great part in the world. It is not open to us to choose whether we will play that great part or not. We have to play it. All we can decide is whether we shall play it well or ill. — Theodore Roosevelt

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation and foreign commerce ... The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives and liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the State. — James Madison

A foreign affair juxtaposed with a stateside
and domestically approved romantic fancy
is mysteriously attractive due to circumstances knowing
it will only be parlayed into a memory — Tom Waits

A recurrent theme in Kissinger's early writing is the historical ignorance of the typical American decision-maker. Lawyers, he remarked in 1968, are the "single most important group in Government, but they do have this drawback - a deficiency in history." For Kissinger, history was doubly important: as a source of illuminating analogies and as the defining factor in national self-understanding. Americans might doubt history's importance, but, as Kissinger wrote, "Europeans, living on a continent covered with ruins testifying to the fallibility of human foresight, feel in their bones that history is more complicated than systems analysis."
-Foreign Affairs, The Meaning of Kissinger: A Realist Reconsidered, By Niall Ferguson — Niall Ferguson

One of the most important secret societies of the 20th century is called the Round Table. It is based in Britain with branches across the world. It is the Round Table that ultimately orchestrates the network of the Bilderberg Group, Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission and the Royal Institute of International Affairs. — David Icke

It's simply not true that Donald Trump has no experience in foreign affairs. Hell, two of his foreign affairs resulted in marriages! — Michael R. Burch

The Daily Telegraph reported on April 9, 1937: 'Since M. Litvinoff ousted Chicherin, no Russian has ever held a high post in the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs.' It seems that the Daily Telegraph was unaware that Chicherin's mother was a Jewess. The Russian Molotov, who became Foreign Minister later, has a Jewish wife, and one of his two assistants is the Jew, Lozovsky. It was the last-named who renewed the treaty with Japan in 1942, by which the Kamchatka fisheries provided the Japanese with an essential part of their food supplies. — Arnold Leese

Historically, it is traditional and habitual for us to be inadequately prepared. This is the combined result of a number factors, the character of which is only indicated: democracy, which tends to make everyone believe that he knows it all; the preponderance, inherent in democracy, of people whose real interest is in their own welfare as individuals; the glorification of our own victories in war and the corresponding ignorance of our defeats - and disgraces - and of their basic causes; the inability of the average individual to understand the cause and effect not only in foreign but domestic affairs, as well as his lack of interest in such matters. Added to these elements is the manner in which our representative form of government has developed as to put a premium on mediocrity and to emphasize the defects of the electorate already mentioned — Ernest J. King

Ladies and gentlemen, it is with great sadness that I announce that I will resign as Australia's Minister for Foreign Affairs. I am sad because I love this job. I'm totally dedicated to the work that we are doing in Australia's name around the world, and I believe that we have achieved many good results for Australia, and I'm proud of them. — Kevin Rudd

If it's wrong when they do it, it's wrong when we do it. — Noam Chomsky

Multi-lateralism's dilemma: that the inclusion of more actors increases the legitimacy of a process or organization at the same time as it decreases its efficiency and utility. — Richard N. Haass

I argue that even as the war is framed in certain ways to control and heighten affect in relation to the differential grievability of lives, so war has come to frame ways of thinking multiculturalism and debates on sexual freedom, issues largely considered separate from foreign affairs. — Judith Butler

Geoffrey's personal style was very different from mine. He has a lovely speaking voice, a quiet speaking voice. But at Cabinet we always reported on foreign affairs - we always had this quiet voice. It was so quiet sometimes I had to say 'speak up'. And he gave it in a way which wasn't exactly scintillating. And you know, foreign affairs are interesting. They affect everything that happened to our own way of life, and they are exciting. And so we just diverged. — Margaret Thatcher

What I am concerned about in this fast-moving world in a time of crises, both in foreign and domestic affairs, is not so much a program as a spirit of approach, not so much a mind as a heart. A program lives today and dies tomorrow. A mind, if it be open, may change with each new day, but the spirit and the heart are as unchanging as the tides. — Owen D. Young

I found Mr. Carter's actions toward the Republic of China so incredible that they defy description by socially acceptable expletives. If December 7, 1941 was a "day of infamy" then December 15, 1978 ranks right up there in international betrayal ... The pathetic thing about this whole mess, however, is that it is typical of this administration's conduct of foreign affairs, which could be kindly described as being riddled by ineptitude and hypocrisy. — Barry Goldwater

The artificial separation of politics and culture is nowhere more pronounced than in the discourse of foreign policy and international affairs. — Ellen Willis

Neville Chamberlain looked at foreign affairs through the wrong end of a municipal drainpipe. — Winston Churchill

It would be the irony of fate if my administration had to deal chiefly with foreign affairs. — Woodrow Wilson

When the San Francisco Democrats treat foreign affairs as an afterthought, as they did, they behaved less like a dove or a hawk than like an ostrich - convinced it could shut out the world by hiding its head in the sand. — Jeane Kirkpatrick

Waiting for me in Stockholm will be a personal assistant - Katrina from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs - as well the secretary of the Swedish Academy. They'll help us with our things and take us to our hotel. From the moment I arrive, I'll always be together with the other two laureates. — Ada Yonath

Europe has never had a single or unified voice in world affairs: a common foreign policy. It has often appeared to be rudderless and unable to make quick decisions when faced with economic crises, presenting instead an image of division and hopelessness. — Klaus Schwab

My politics are very centrist and sometimes, especially when it comes to foreign affairs, lean to the right. — Peter Landesman

At the beginning, because the lives of the hostages were at stake, then during this silent period we have taken several measures like not accepting the ultimatum of the terrorists threatening to kill our foreign affairs minister. — Alberto Fujimori

Almost everything Truman did in foreign affairs I approve of. — Stephen Ambrose

We look a little bit disorderly, indecisive, leaderless. That's a real problem, and that's a problem that concerns me particularly on foreign affairs. The presidency, not just President Obama, but the presidency in recent years has lost some of the terrain that they used to dominate in the making of foreign policy. I think President Obama has to make a serious effort to regain it because he lost some of it himself. — Zbigniew Brzezinski

Usually scripts are beneficial, or at least harmless. The constant daily drone of small talk, the ritual greetings, even venting anger or complaining about politics or foreign affairs that we have no direct knowledge of, are all comforting. It's the soothing background noise of a group without a pending crisis. — Rory Miller

We have been using foreign affairs ministries to address security issues, but this practice is outdated. It's time to assign the handling of regional security to national organizations and expert institutions. — Enrique Pena Nieto

Nixon had some large achievements in foreign affairs. They will be remembered. But a president probably gets remembered for one thing, and Watergate will head the Nixon list, I suspect. — Bob Woodward

We have the responsibility to ensure that our first impulse in foreign affairs is one of bipartisanship. — Richard Lugar

The Laws Of God, The Laws Of Man

The laws of God, the laws of man
He may keep that will and can;
Not I: Let God and man decree
Laws for themselves and not for me;
And if my ways are not as theirs
Let them mind their own affairs.
Their deeds I judge and much condemn,
Yet when did I make laws for them?
Please yourselves, Say I, and they
Need only look the other way.
But no, they will not; they must still
Wrest their neighbor to their will,
And make me dance as they desire
With jail and gallows and hellfire.
And how am I to face the odds
Of man's bedevilment and God's?
I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made.
They will be master, right or wrong;
Though both are foolish, both are strong.
And since, my soul, we cannot fly
To Saturn nor to Mercury,
Keep we must, if keep we can
These foreign laws of God and man. — A.E. Housman

The humanitarian would, of course, have us meddle in foreign affairs as part of his program of world service. — Irving Babbitt

I don't believe I'll ever get credit for anything I do in foreign affairs, no matter how successful it is, because I didn't go to Harvard. — Lyndon B. Johnson

He had conquered murder only to be faced with war. There were no laws for that. — T.H. White

Americans, being a moral people, want their foreign policy to reflect the values we espouse as a nation. But Americans, being a practical people, also want their foreign policy to be effective. — George Shultz

Several centuries ago the greatest writer in history described the two most menacing clouds that hang over human government and human society as "malice domestic and fierce foreign war." We are not rid of these dangers but we can summon our intelligence to meet them.

Never was there more genuine reason for Americans to face down these two causes of fear. "Malice domestic" from time to time will come to you in the shape of those who would raise false issues, pervert facts, preach the gospel of hate, and minimize the importance of public action to secure human rights or spiritual ideals. There are those today who would sow these seeds, but your answer to them is in the possession of the plain facts of our present condition. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

University of Havana
Student protests, which actually led to the closure of the university, helped to shape Autonomy for Cuba's university system. After the school reopened in 1959 the government's policy was to not interfere with school affairs. On November 27, 2007, five thousand people signed a petition insisting on autonomy from the state as well as freedom of expression for the island nations' universities and thus, this autonomy was even granted by the present Communist government. The concept of "University Students without Borders" was endorsed by both the students and faculty members, representing universities in the provinces throughout Cuba. The State of New York University (SUNY) in Albany, now offers their students the opportunity to pursue courses in Cuban history, culture and politics. Most of these courses, as well as intensive Spanish language classes, are taught to foreign students in Cuba. — Hank Bracker

No son of mine is going to be a goddamn liberal, Kennedy interjected. Now, now Joe, Luce answered, of course he's got to run as a liberal. A Democrat has to run left of center to get the vote in the big northern cities, so don't hold it against him if he's left of center, because we won't. We know his problems and what he has to do. So we won't fight him there. But on foreign affairs, Luce continued, if he shows any sign of weakness toward the anti-Communist cause - or, as Luce decided to put it more positively - if he shows any weakness in defending the cause of the free world, we'll turn on him. There's no chance of that, Joe Kennedy had guaranteed; no son of mine is going to be soft on Communism. — David Halberstam

The very phrase 'foreign affairs' makes an Englishman convinced that I am about to treat of subjects with which he has no concern. — Benjamin Disraeli

Prince Felipe is the best ambassador for Spain: I have already told Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo, minister of foreign affairs, that the prince should travel to the U.S. more often. — James Costos

[T]here seems to have been an actual decline in rational thinking. The United States had become a place where entertainers and professional athletes were mistaken for people of importance. They were idolized and treated as leaders; their opinions were sought on everything and they took themselves just as seriously-after all, if an athlete is paid a million or more a year, he knows he is important ... so his opinions of foreign affairs and domestic policies must be important, too, even though he proves himself to be ignorant and subliterate every time he opens his mouth. — Robert A. Heinlein

The de facto censorship which leaves so many Americans functionally illiterate about the history of US foreign affairs may be all the more effective because it is not official, heavy-handed or conspiratorial, but woven artlessly into the fabric of education and media. No conspiracy is needed. — William Blum

The issue of war or peace is an issue that concerns not only experts on Foreign Affairs but every citizen of the United States. — Anne Morrow Lindbergh

I should have paid greater attention to my mentor in graduate school, Samuel Huntington, who once explained that Americans never recognize that, in the developing world, the key is not the kind of government - communist, capitalist, democratic, dictatorial - but the degree of government. That absence of government is what we are watching these days, from Libya to Iraq to Syria.
("Why they still hate us, 13 years later," Washington Post, 09/05/2014) — Fareed Zakaria

There can never be peace in Ireland until the foreign oppressive British presence is removed, leaving all the Irish people as a unit to control their own affairs and determine their own destinies as a sovereign people, free in mind and body, separate and distinct physically, culturally and economically. — Bobby Sands

In foreign affairs, the president can do what he wants unless Congress says no. In domestic policy, the president can't do anything unless Congress says yes. — Bill Vaughan

Watching foreign affairs is sometimes like watching a magician; the eye is drawn to the hand performing the dramatic flourishes, leaving the other hand - the one doing the important job - unnoticed. — David K. Shipler

Foreign policy is a matter of costs and benefits, not theology. — Fareed Zakaria

In fact, our monthly trade deficit figure is so huge it equals the entire annual budget of our Department of Veterans Affairs. Veterans fought to make us free from foreign tyranny, but the new tyranny is taking a different form. — Marcy Kaptur

Some reasonable term ought to be allowed to enable aliens to get rid of foreign and acquire American attachments; to learn the principles and imbibe the spirit of our government; and to admit of a probability at least, of their feeling a real interest in our affairs. — Alexander Hamilton

My father is an economist who specialized in foreign food policy, and my mother worked for AID, a branch of the State Department, so food in regards to world affairs was talked about a lot. — Jennifer Gilmore

To study foreign affairs without putting ourselves into others' shoes is to deal in illusion and to prepare students for a lifelong misunderstanding of our place in the world. — Paul Gagnon

Power must be used, but it must be tempered by soul-searching and the recognition of our human capacity for error. That is the maxim that should inform our approach to every challenge, from reforming state government to engaging in foreign affairs. — Eliot Spitzer

Flemming Axmark, and Preben Hansen. The Royal Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Copenhagen: Nordisk — Nete Schmidt

Affairs of state tend to drive most presidents toward the center on both foreign and domestic policy, no matter where on the political spectrum they begin, and especially so in the areas of intelligence and law enforcement. — David K. Shipler

Most vagabonds i knowed don't ever want to find the culprit that remains the object of their long relentless quest. The obsession's in the chasing and not the apprehending, the pursuit you see and never the arrest" - Tom Waits "Foreign Affairs — Tom Waits

Foreign policy isn't something that is great and big, it's common sense and humanity as it applies to my affairs and yours. — Ernest Bevin

One of the foremost activities of the NSA's FAD, or Foreign Affairs Division, is to pressure or incentivize EU member states to change their laws to enable mass surveillance. — Edward Snowden

The clerical system of church management is exceedingly popular, but the whole thought is foreign to Scripture. In a church all the members are active. He [God] appointed some to take oversight of the work so that it might be carried on efficiently. It was never His thought that the majority of the believers should devote themselves exclusively to secular affairs and leave church matters to a group of spiritual specialists. — Watchman Nee

Refuting the false promises requires philosophic understanding of economic interventionism, central banking, and the deeply flawed foreign policy of meddling in the affairs of other nations. — Ron Paul

The success of this Government, and thus the success of our Nation, depends in the last analysis upon the quality.of our career services. The legislation enacted by the Congress, as well as the decisions made by me and by the department and agency heads, must all be implemented by the career men and women in the Federal service. In foreign affairs, national defense, science and technology, and a host of other fields, they face problems of unprecedented importance and perplexity. We are all dependent on their sense of loyalty and responsibility as well as their competence and energy. — John F. Kennedy

We're in an illusion about what our role is in world politics and foreign affairs, and our policies are killing and destroying and doing a lot of things that we are not aware of. — Talib Kweli

This is the devilish thing about foreign affairs: they are foreign and will not always conform to our whim. — James Reston

Nowhere have women been more excluded from decision-making than in the military and foreign affairs. When it comes to the military and questions of nuclear disarmament, the gender gap becomes the gender gulf. — Eleanor Smeal

If the estimate of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs is correct, then Russia has lost the cold war in western Europe. — Walter Lippmann

The United States has made serious mistakes in the conduct of its foreign affairs, which have had unfortunate repercussions long after the decisions were taken. — Nelson Mandela

Americans are inclined to see the world and foreign affairs in black and white. — Richard Kerry

The U.S. public is depoliticised, poorly informed on foreign affairs ... and strongly patriotic in the face of a struggle with another Hitler. Even though the public is normally averse to war, even with modest propaganda efforts ... the public can be quickly transformed into enthusiastic supporters of war. — Edward S. Herman

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

As Minister of Foreign Affairs. I will work on deepening Haiti's links with its traditional partners from the North and the South, while exploring all the opportunities for economic, cultural, scientific and technological cooperation that may benefit my country. — Laurent Lamothe

Thus all civilian officials and military officers in the United States government who either knew or should have known that the Reagan administration intended to assassinate Qaddafi and participated in the bombing operation are "war criminals" according to the U.S. government's own official definition of that term. The American people should not have permitted any aspect of their foreign affairs and defense policies to be conducted by acknowledged "war criminals." They should have insisted upon the impeachment, dismissal, resignation, and prosecution of all U.S. government officials guilty of such war crimes. Nevertheless, U.S. public opinion had been so effectively brutalized by five years of Reaganism that over three-quarters of the American people rallied to the support of their demented leadership over the destruction, injuries, and death it had inflicted upon hundreds of innocent civilians in Tripoli and Benghazi. — Francis A. Boyle

I think he's informing himself, reaching out and getting ideas and information and advice. I haven't the slightest doubt that internally taking shape in that marvelous brain of his is a philosophy of foreign affairs. But it would be premature to say that one is fully formed. — Theodore C. Sorensen

During the election campaign of 2000, it was generally thought that then-governor Bush didn't know much about foreign policy or national security affairs, and that Colin Powell would lead on that front, while the president's main concern would be domestic. — Elliott Abrams

Egypt, too, learned to respect the long arm of British capitalism. During the nineteenth century, French and British investors lent huge sums to the rulers of Egypt, first in order to finance the Suez Canal project, and later to fund far less successful enterprises. Egyptian debt swelled, and European creditors increasingly meddled in Egyptian affairs. In 1881 Egyptian nationalists had had enough and rebelled. They declared a unilateral abrogation of all foreign debt. Queen Victoria was not amused. A year later she dispatched her army and navy to the Nile and Egypt remained a British protectorate until after World War Two. — Yuval Noah Harari

The limitations imposed by democratic political practices makes it difficult to conduct our foreign affairs in the national interest. — Dean Acheson

I am confident my Hindutva face will be an asset when dealing with foreign affairs with other nations. — Narendra Modi

Even to an outsider like myself, not only in the theatre was such disunity evident, but in much else in government Spain. Alvarez del Vayo, Socialist Minister of Foreign Affairs, once asked, Why is it Spain's people are so great, but her leaders so small? — Langston Hughes

I fully, fully concede that Secretary Hillary Clinton, who was secretary of State for four years, has more experience - hat is not arguable - in foreign affairs. — Bernie Sanders

Ronald Reagan in foreign affairs, I think, was someone who had certain, very general ideas, general propositions by which he lives: To combat communism, to build up the American military power to assure our national security against any conceivable threat. — Robert Dallek

Our best presidents have really combined domestic leadership with heroic achievements in foreign affairs or war. — Allan Lichtman

To divine the course of world events, you'd do as well to probe the entrails of dead animals. Better still, ask your hairstylist. She will be at least as insightful and probably more entertaining a prophet than anyone you can read in Foreign Affairs or the op-ed page of the Washington Post. — Andrew Bacevich

Only two or three months ago, one of the Tokyo newspapers (I can't remember which) admirably reported that a two hundred inch astronomical telescope in America was halfway toward completion. I should like to praise the editor of that newspaper. Articles about war, foreign affairs, and the stock market are not the only things that should be considered newsworthy. A two hundred inch lens can magnify our view of the cosmos considerably. The scope of human vision will expand tremendously. It will become possible to see what was once impossible to behold. It will be a momentous occasion, as though the whole human race, once blind, is granted the gift of sight. Its importance is unrivalled by any war. — Rampo Edogawa