Diplomat Quotes

Britain will be honoured by historians more for the way she disposed of an empire than for the way in which she acquired it.

David Ormsby-Gore, 5th Baron Harlech

Now in my opinion, out of all the countries I have personally known, England is the one where public affairs are best conducted and regulated with least violence to the people. There no buildings are knocked down or demolished through war, and disaster and misfortune befall those who make war.

Philippe de Commines

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.

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

There is always the danger that if you speak a language that recognizes only individual rights, you will become a people that can think only about individuals.

Mary Ann Glendon

They're a burden for us
the friends who no longer know how to die.

Giorgos Seferis

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…

Today we only smile, we laugh no more,
And e'en our very pleasures seem to bore.

François-Joachim de Pierre de Bernis

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.

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.

May there be freedom, equality and brotherhood among all men. May there be morality in the relations among nations. May there be, in our time, at long last, a world at peace in which we, the people, may for once begin to make full use of the great good that is in us.

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...

In the little moment that remains to us between the crisis and the catastrophe, we may as well drink a glass of champagne.

The ideal civil servant should always be colourless, odourless and tasteless.

Roger Peyrefitte

We have shown that socialism is an incoherent combination of thesis and antithesis, which contradict and destroy one another. Catholicism, on the contrary forms a great synthesis which includes all things in its unity, and infuses them in its sovereign harmony. It may be affirmed of Catholic dogmas, that, although they are diverse, they are one. Only an abolute negation can be opposed to this wonderful synthesis. The Catholic word is then invincible and eternal. Nothing can diminish its sovereign viture.

Juan Donoso Cortés

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

William J. Crowe

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

Payola is the year's new word. It doesn't sound as ugly as bribe, but it means the same thing.

William Attwood

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

We don't give them fish. However, we teach them fishing. In that way throughout your life you always have fish to eat. That is Taiwan's way in our joint co-operation in offering assistance to Taiwan's diplomatic allies in the Pacific. All these countries value their relationship with us very much.

Katharine Chang

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

The gossip that came back to me from fashionable dinners where people pitied poor Romain Gary, who must be a little sad, a little jealous of the meteoric rise in the literary firmament of his cousin Emile Ajar… I've had a lot of fun. Good-bye, and thank you.

Last words:

I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity, and therefore I die in exile.

Pope Gregory VII

Greece is a sort of American vassal; the Netherlands is the country of American bases that grow like tulip bulbs; Cuba is the main sugar plantation of the American monopolies; Turkey is prepared to kowtow before any United States proconsul and Canada is the boring second fiddle in the American symphony.