American Diplomat Quotes

Sidney Poitier

Madeleine Albright

James Russell Lowell

Alexander Haig

Maxwell D. Taylor

Richard Holbrooke

James Longstreet

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.

There was no indication of panic. The broken files marched back in steady step. The effort was nobly made and failed from the blows that could not be fended.

James Longstreet

Let your motto be RESISTANCE! RESISTANCE! RESISTANCE! No oppressed people have ever secured their Liberty without resistance. What kind of resistance you had better make, you must decide by the circumstances that surround you, and according to the suggestion of expediency.

Henry Highland Garnet

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.

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

Caroline Kennedy

Dullness is the only crime for which an editor ought to be hung.

Josephus Daniels

A mugwump is a person educated beyond his intellect.

In a general sense, this doctrine [conservation of energy] is coeval with the dawn of human intelligence. It is nothing more than an application of the simple principle that nothing can come from or to nothing...

The art of injudicious reading, the art of miscellaneous reading which every normal man ought to cultivate, is a very fine and satisfactory art; for the best guide to books is a book itself. It clasps hands with a thousand other books.

Maurice Francis Egan

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 (lawyer)

The imagination of these conquered peoples was dazzled by the introduction of Greek art, literature, philosophy, and public works. Though the successors of Alexander were unable to maintain the political control of the lands he conquered, and though successive waves of Roman, Arabian, and Tartar conquests swept over these lands in succeeding centuries, none of the later conquerors has been able wholly to eradicate the influence of Greek culture, nor to exterminate that element of population which was of Greek blood.

Henry Morgenthau, Sr.

The real strength of democracy is that anyone who is not specifically against it must ultimately be for it, while communism suffers from the great tactical liability that anyone who is not specifically for it is eventually forced to oppose it.

Edwin O. Reischauer

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.

He wanted to be the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral.

Nicholas Roosevelt

No system of education is complete that does not harden the hands and toughen muscles, while it is also develops the intellect and enlarges the heart...only through work do we attain the true symmetry, strength, and glory of godly manhood and womanhood.

Alexander Clark

A great factory with the machinery all working and revolving with absolute and rhythmic regularity and with the men all driven by one impulse, and moving in unison as though a constituent part of the mighty machine, is one of the most inspiring examples of directed force that the world knows. I have rarely seen the face of a mechanic in the action of creation which was not fine, never one which was not earnest and impressive.

Thomas Nelson Page

Individual liberty is the whole purpose of political life, and I thought it was threatened then [in 1964 becoming politically engaged at age 15] and I think it's threatened now.

Of these no more. From Orders, Slaves and Kings,
To thee, O Man, my heart rebounding springs.
Behold th' ascending bliss that waits your call,
Heav'n's own bequest, the heritage of all.
Awake to wisdom, seize the proffer'd prize;
From shade to light, from grief to glory rise.
Freedom at last, with Reason in her train,
Extends o'er earth her everlasting reign…

Those are the facts surrounding my efforts. The vice president's office asked a serious question. I was asked to help formulate the answer. I did so, and I have every confidence that the answer I provided was circulated to the appropriate officials within our government.
The question now is how that answer was or was not used by our political leadership. If my information was deemed inaccurate, I understand (though I would be very interested to know why). If, however, the information was ignored because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses.

Joseph C. Wilson

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

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

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.

The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.

Edward John Phelps

Democracy cannot be built on revenge and you will not have the support of the world if you are intolerant and take the law into your own hands.

Madeleine Albright