20th-century Diplomat Quotes

Michael Schumacher

Hirohito

Kofi Annan

Pope Paul VI

Giorgos Seferis

Sidney Poitier

Madeleine Albright

Judgment is more than skill. It sets forth on intellectual seas beyond the shores of hard indisputable factual information.

Kingman Brewster, Jr.

I think that people always just assumed that I was a liberal because I came from Southeast Seattle.

Recession is when you have to tighten the belt. Depression is when there is no belt to tighten. We are probably in the next degree of collapse when there are no trousers as such.

Of Russia

I hope that government workers can be proactive. … Doling out punishment constantly would only cause them to have a mentality of 'the less one does, the fewer mistakes one makes.'

There's no doubt about it. It is an illegal take-over. It's an illegal take-over to clean up the mess of a much bigger illegal activity of the previous government. So what choice do you have? To me, it's better that you do this illegal activity to clean up a much bigger, illegal mess so that we can bring peace … to the people of Fiji.

Jona Senilagakali

Approach your problems from the right end and begin with the answers. Then, one day, perhaps you will find the final answer.

Robert van Gulik

For the problem of decision-making in our complicated world is not how to get the problem simple enough so that we can all understand it; the problem is how to get our thinking about the problem as complex as humanly possible--and thus approach (we can never match) the complexity of the real world around us.

Harlan Cleveland

You cannot be effective if those who work for you are not. So building their effectiveness ought to be a priority.

Richard N. Haass

Good government can be no substitute for self-government.

Muhammad Zafrulla Khan

Three American presidents-Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson-have asked the question: What do we get from aiding Pakistan? Five-Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama-have wondered aloud whether Pakistan's leaders can be trusted to keep their word.

Let them march all they want, as long as they continue to pay their taxes.

Poetry cannot report the event, it must be the event, lived through in a form that can speak about itself while remaining wholly itself.

Balachandra Rajan

We continue to assert the principles of no political preconditions, mutual respect and openness to innovation as the basis of talks with Beijing, while showing goodwill and creating a friendly environment for communication.

When I was in the military I always made it my first mission to burn the enemy's crops!

William J. Crowe

I recommended that we establish contact with [the Chinese communists]. We had established contact through a military mission there but that we did not... we should not withdraw recognition from Chiang Kai-shek at that time, but we should recognize the inevitability of the loss, Chiang's loss to Mao, and that therefore we should, establish relations of the type that I described that we had with warlords, with the communists, and that we have, say, a consulate there, so that there was a political contact in addition to the military. That, of course, did not go down.

John Paton Davies, Jr.

Baby, after considerable thought I've reached the conclusion that the only conceivable legitimate answer to the Universe as constituted is a peal of hysterical laughter.

If you achieve a voice that will be heard, you should use it to speak up for the voiceless and oppressed. If you possess any power or authority, you must strive to use it to help and empower the powerless.

In the lead up to the Iraq war and its later conduct, I saw at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility, at worse, lying, incompetence and corruption.

Essentially these stockholders, though still politely called "owners", are passive. They have the right to receive only. The condition of their being is that they do not interfere in management.

Now it is our turn to prove that the New Frontier was not a place in time, but a timeless call.

Caroline Kennedy

Every child and adult should have the skills and the tools to respond to the challenges of the world today and make the most of the opportunities that are available.

Robert Spencer: Just ask all those secular republics in the Islamic world.

I am a fighter. I believe in the bright future of my country. I believe that the people of my country deserve a decent life, and I know that my people want to live in freedom.

Roza Otunbayeva

The Department has noted with considerable apprehension increasing propaganda rumors and semi-official statements in favor of an autonomous Macedonia emanating from Bulgaria, but also from Yugoslav partisan and other sources with the implication that Greek territory would be included in the projected State. This Government considers talk of "Macedonian Nation", "Macedonian Fatherland", or "Macedonian National Consciousness" to be unjustified demagoguery representing no ethnic or political reality, and sees in its present revival a possible cloak for aggressive intentions against Greece.

Edward R. Stettinius

My faith instills in me a deep sense of humility and gratitude, reminding me how often I fall short and how much I need the savior, and how thankful I am that God has done for us what we could not do for ourselves.