Jefferson Foreign Policy Quotes & Sayings

Kissinger traces the balances made in foreign policy, including that of realism and idealism, from the times of Cardinal Richelieu through chapters on Theodore Roosevelt the realist and Woodrow Wilson the idealist. Kissinger, a European refugee who has read Metternich more avidly than Jefferson, is unabashedly in the realist camp. "No other nation," he wrote in Diplomacy, "has ever rested its claim to international leadership on its altruism." Other Americans might proclaim this as a point of pride; when Kissinger says it, his attitude seems that of an anthropologist examining a rather unsettling tribal ritual. The practice of basing policy on ideals rather than interests, he pointed out, can make a nation seem dangerously unpredictable. — Walter Isaacson

Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations ... entangling alliances with none — Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson went still further, and he introduced a maxim into the policy of the Union, which affirms that the Americans ought never to solicit any privileges from foreign nations, in order not to be obliged to grant similar privileges themselves. — Alexis De Tocqueville

The platform we had in Dallas, the 1984 Republican platform, all the ideas we supported there - from tax policy, to foreign policy; from individual rights, to neighborhood security - are things that Jefferson Davis and his people believed in. — Trent Lott

We wish the happiness and prosperity of every nation. — Thomas Jefferson