Oliver Herford Quotes

Diplomacy: The patriotic art of lying for one's country.

Most governments lie to each other. That's the way business gets done.

In order to be a diplomat, one must speak a number of languages, including doubletalk.

You'd make a great Secretary of State because State Department personnel don't answer questions completely either.

A pupil of diplomacy has to learn three things: to speak French, to speak nothing, and to speak falsehood.

Dealing with a government with whom mendacity is a science is an extremely difficult and delicate matter.

Diplomacy is a disguised war, in which states seek to gain by barter and intrigue, by the cleverness of arts, the objectives which they would have to gain more clumsily by means of war.

Diplomacy, of course, is a subtle and nuanced craft, so much so that it's said that when the most wily diplomat of the nineteenth-century passed away, other diplomats asked, on reports of his death, "What do you suppose the old fox meant by that?

(A Foreign Secretary) is forever poised between the cliche and the indiscretion.

I was too busy looking into Yeltsin's eyes to notice what was under the table.

A real diplomat is one who can cut his neighbor's throat without having his neighbor notice it.

Diplomats make it their business to conceal the facts, and politicians violently denounce the politicians of other countries.

An ambassador is an honest man sent abroad to lie and intrigue for the benefit of his country.

Diplomats make it their business to conceal the facts.

Backstabbing for Beginners: My Crash Course in International Diplomacy

As a survivor, you learn how to talk fast, cut deals, lie when you have to - perfect training to be a politician, you know?

Diplomacy is the police in grand costume.

Tell the truth or trump-but get the trick.

I meet with ambassadors from all countries in my role as a member of Congress, and you always have better relationships with those you actually personally get along with. That matters. So if there is chemistry between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, maybe that can bode for something.

Diplomacy is the velvet glove that cloaks the fist of power.

An ambassador is an honest man sent abroad to lie for his country.

Honored delegates, leaders of the world, I pretend for a living.

Lawyers do not mix with diplomacy.

Frankly, most governments are used to lying to each other - to a degree that most people would find shocking. Part of diplomacy is the art of strategic lying.

Politics and war are remarkably similar situations.