Diplomat Quotes

Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance.

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.

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

François-Joachim de Pierre de Bernis

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…

A mugwump is a person educated beyond his intellect.

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.

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

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

Good government can be no substitute for self-government.

Muhammad Zafrulla Khan

The so-called Al-Qaeda is, in my opinion, an illusion. It is a bunch of organizations which used to be supervised by the CIA, and used to commit crimes in some Arab and Islamic countries.

Riyad Naasan Agha

We would also like you to know that the Church recognizes the riches of the Islamic faith - a faith that binds us to the one God.

Oratory is just like prostitution: you must have little tricks.

Vittorio Emanuele Orlando

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

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

I would stand with God against man, rather than with man against God.

Aristides de Sousa Mendes

The neglect of the humanities in present-day education is doubtless not a cause but a symptom of an age.

The sentimentalist does not think of what he does so much as of what the world will think of what he does.

James Russell Lowell

The more true science advances, the more it discovers God, almost, as though he were standing, vigilant behind every door which science opens.

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.

If added power attends the united prayer of two or three, what mighty triumphs there will be when hundreds of thousands of consistent members of the Church are with one accord day by day making intercession for the extension of Christ's Kingdom.

It is an observation which all the world can verify, that there is nothing so deplorable as the conduct of some celebrated mathematicians in their own affairs, nor anything so absurd as their opinions on the sciences not within their jurisdiction.

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

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.

Last words:

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

Pope Gregory VII

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.