Quotes by Diplomats - Page 7

Millions for defense but not one cent for tribute.
Charles C. Pinckney
To harden the earththe rocks took charge:instantlythey grew wings:the rocksthat soared:the survivorsflew upthe lightning bolt,screamed in the night,a watermark,a violet sword,a meteor.The succulentskyhad not only clouds,not only space smelling of oxygen,but an earthly stoneflashing here and therechanged into a dove,changed into a bell,into immensity, into a piercingwind:into a phosphorescent arrow,into salt of the sky.
Pablo Neruda
The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions.
James Russell Lowell
Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.
James Russell Lowell
...to imitate Western civilization in its spirit, its mode of life and its social organization is impossible without dealing a fatal blow to the very existence of Islam as an ideological proposition.
Muhammad Asad
The situation is one something like living with your wife. Sometimes it is difficult and even irritating to live with her but it is always impossible to live without her.
Lester Pearson
To those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual,or transgender-let me say- you are not alone. You're struggle, for the end to violence and discrimination, is a shared struggle. Today, I stand with you. And I call upon all countries and people, to stand with you too.A historic shift is underway. We must tackle the violence, decriminalize consensual same sex relationships and end discrimination. We must educate the public. I call on this council and people of conscience to make this happen.The time has come.
Ban Ki-Moon
Most Americans are close to total ignorance about the world. They are ignorant. That is an unhealthy condition in a country in which foreign policy has to be endorsed by the people if it is to be pursued. And it makes it much more difficult for any president to pursue an intelligent policy that does justice to the complexity of the world.
Zbigniew Brzeziński
History is the long struggle of man, by exercise of his reason, to understand his environment and to act upon it. But the modern period has broadened the struggle in a revolutionary way. Man now seeks to understand, and act on, not only his environment, but himself; and this has added, so to speak, a new dimension to reason and a new dimension to history.
Edward Hallett Carr
If there is no God,Not everything is permitted to man.He is still his brother's keeperAnd he is not permitted to sadden his brother,By saying there is no God.
Czesław Miłosz
The loving are the daring.
Bayard Taylor
You should take a good look at all sides of an issue before making a decision. Put something away in case of an emergency. New neighbors will bring good cheer. A small problem may occur at home base, but you will solve it quickly and correctly. Don’t offer smart advice unless you are really asked to comment.
Vikas Swarup
Old age is the Outpatient's Dept of purgatory.
Lord Cecil
Some minds seem almost to create themselves springing up under every disadvantage and working their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand obstacles.
Washington Irving
Brotherhood is the very price and condition of man's survival.
Carlos P. Romulo
You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.
John Adams
I demolish my bridges behind me ... then there is no choice but forward.
Firdtjof Nansen
Friendship with oneself is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.
Eleanor Roosevelt
The members of the functional and socially mobilized under class must, in some very real way, be seen as the architects of their own fate. If not, they could be, however marginally, on the conscience of the comfortable. There could be a disturbing feeling, however fleeting, of unease, even guilt.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Posterity! you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it.
John Adams
Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.
Tehyi Hsieh
Our greatest illusion is reliance upon the security and permanence of material possessions. We must search for some other coin.
John Cudahy
Humility before the flower at the timber line is the gate which gives access to the path up the open fell.
Dag Hammarskjöld
And here comes in the question whether it is better to be loved rather than feared, or feared rather than loved. It might perhaps be answered that we should wish to be both; but since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.
Niccolò Machiavelli
I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.
Henry Kissinger
But confining myself more to the particular, I say that a prince may be seen happy to-day and ruined to-morrow without having shown any change of disposition or character. This, I believe, arises firstly from causes that have already been discussed at length, namely, that the prince who relies entirely upon fortune is lost when it changes. I believe also that he will be successful who directs his actions according to the spirit of the times, and that he whose actions do not accord with the times will not be successful. Because men are seen, in affairs that lead to the end which every man has before him, namely, glory and riches, to get there by various methods; one with caution, another with haste; one by force, another by skill; one by patience, another by its opposite; and each one succeeds in reaching the goal by a different method. One can also see of two cautious men the one attain his end, the other fail; and similarly, two men by different observances are equally successful, the one being cautious, the other impetuous; all this arises from nothing else than whether or not they conform in their methods to the spirit of the times. This follows from what I have said, that two men working differently bring about the same effect, and of two working similarly, one attains his object and the other does not.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Where the willingness is great the difficulties cannot be great.
Niccolò Machiavelli
In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent; A thing brought forth that we didn't know we had in us, So we blink our eyes, as if a tiger had sprung out And stood in the light, licking its tail.
Czesław Miłosz
The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.
Edward J. Phelps
Since 1849 I have studied incessantly, under all its aspects, a question which was already in my mind since 1832. I confess that my scheme is still a mere dream, and I do not shut my eyes to the fact that so long as I alone believe it to be possible, it is virtually impossible. ... The scheme in question is the cutting of a canal through the Isthmus of Suez. This has been thought of from the earliest historical times, and for that very reason is looked upon as impracticable. Geographical dictionaries inform us indeed that the project would have been executed long ago but for insurmountable obstacles. [On his inspiration for the Suez Canal.]
Ferdinand de Lesseps
The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.
Niccolò Machiavelli
When evening comes, I go back home, and go to my study. On the threshold I take off my work clothes, covered in mud and filth, and put on the clothes an ambassador would wear. Decently dressed, I enter the ancient courts of rulers who have long since died. There I am warmly welcomed, and I feed on the only food I find nourishing, and was born to savor. I am not ashamed to talk to them, and to ask them to explain their actions. And they, out of kindness, answer me. Four hours go by without my feeling any anxiety. I forget every worry. I am no longer afraid of poverty, or frightened of death. I live entirely through them.
Niccolò Machiavelli
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Every man in it is a great man an orator a critic a statesman and therefore every man upon every question must show his oratory his criticism and his political abilities.
John Adams
In general those who nothing have to say Contrive to spend the longest time in doing it.
James Russell Lowell
Know something about something. Don't just present your wonderful self to the world. Constantly amass knowledge and offer it around.
Richard Holbrooke
Only those means of security are good are certain are lasting that depend on yourself and your own vigor.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Success must include two things: the development of an individual to his utmost potentiality and a contribution of some kind to one's world.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Compromise makes a good umbrella but a poor roof it is a temporary expedient often wise in party politics almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship.
James Russell Lowell
I held my breath and wished for that moment to last as long as it possibly could, because a waking dream is always more fleeting than a sleeping one.
Vikas Swarup
A degenerate nobleman or one that is proud of his birth is like a turnip. There is nothing good of him but that which is underground.
Nicholas Murray Butler
The nurse of full-grown souls is solitude.
James Russell Lowell
Nature they say doth dote And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan Repeating us by rote.
James Russell Lowell
When we learn to speak, we learn to translate.
Octavio Paz
Lajwanti made the cardinal mistake of trying to cross the dividing line that separates the existence of the rich from that of the poor. She made the fatal error of dreaming beyond her means. The bigger the dream, the bigger the disappointment.
Vikas Swarup
And what is so rare as a day in June? Then if ever come perfect days Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune And over it softly her warm ear lays.
James Russell Lowell
Will people ever be wise enough to refuse to follow bad leaders or to take away the freedom of other people?
Eleanor Roosevelt
Girl lithe and tawny, the sun that formsthe fruits, that plumps the grains, that curls seaweedsfilled your body with joy, and your luminous eyesand your mouth that has the smile of the water.A black yearning sun is braided into the strandsof your black mane, when you stretch your arms.You play with the sun as with a little brookand it leaves two dark pools in your eyes.
Pablo Neruda
American musicians, instead of investigating ragtime, attempt to ignore it, or dismiss it with a contemptuous word. But that has always been the course of scholasticism in every branch of art. Whatever new thing the 'people' like is poohpoohed; whatever is 'popular' is spoken of as not worth the while. The fact is, nothing great or enduring, especially in music, has ever sprung full-fledged and unprecedented from the brain of any master; the best that he gives to the world he gathers from the hearts of the people, and runs it through the alembic of his genius.
James Weldon Johnson
In economics the majority is always wrong.
J. K. Galbraith
Within this historic and optimistic future in mind, I have made no value judgment of the destiny bestowed on each nation. For all this, however, leadership matters; so do the institutional structures and the system of political governance.
Patrick Mendis
Do one thing every day that scares you.
Eleanor Roosevelt
The principle of neutrality ... has increasingly become an obsolete conception and except under very special circumstances it is an immoral and shortsighted conception.
John Foster Dulles
Whom the heart of man shuts out Sometimes the heart of God takes in.
James Russell Lowell
There is nothing certain in a man's life but that he must lose it.
Owen Meredith
Earth's noblest thing a Woman perfected.
James Russell Lowell
Montesquieu had the style of a genius Buffon the genius of style.
Baron Grimm
It is better to go skiing and think of God, than go to church and think of sport.
Fridtjof Nansen
You've got to S-M-I-L-ETo be H-A-Double-P-Y
Shirley Temple Black
I am always at a loss to know how much to believe of my own stories.
Washington Irving