Edward Grey Quotes

The moment Germany rises as a great power, France gains a new importance as a cultural power.

If there is one great power, and the great power has taken upon itself the right to preempt and is choosing for itself when and in what circumstances it's going to do that, obviously it leads people in the rest of the world to wonder how far this doctrine extends.

The US is a difficult partner, but an indispensable one. Everyone who have had to do with US politicians and diplomats knows they aren't easy to deal with. That is because of their immense sense of power. But an alliance with the US is absolutely necessary because of our relations with, on the one hand, Germany and France, and, on the other, Russia.

No great power will allow itself to be strangulated.

The Franco-German tandem at the core of post-war European integration has become lopsided. Relations between Berlin and Paris are unusually poor, with some French politicians decrying the 'selfish intransigence' in the euro crisis of Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel.

The U.S. must differentiate between controversial assertions of power, like those in the South China Sea, and fair reflections of China's growing contribution to the world, such as the new banks.

It was in our power to cause the Arab governments to renounce the policy of strength toward Israel by turning it into a demonstration of weakness.

I think a reason that a lot of people feel politically paralysed is that it used to be clear how power was organised. But those who have their hands on the levers of popular culture today have great power - and it isn't even clear who they are.

Addressing global resentment cannot be put off. If we do not learn to use our predominant power with great restraint, we will antagonize the world.

The Russians have a lot at stake, and the power of Moscow pride should never be underestimated.

The United States, like any great power, is always going to have an intelligence operation, and some electronic surveillance is obligatory in the modern world.

Britain is a European power. We cannot change our geography. Our involvement in the politics of European cooperation is one of necessity. Our wealth and our security depend upon it.

A great power has to have the discipline not only to go when necessary but to know when not to go. Getting involved in ethnic, religious civil wars is a recipe for disaster.

Politics is the art of the possible.

Much of the conventional analysis of India's stature in the world relies on the all-too-familiar economic assumptions. But we are famously a land of paradoxes, and one of those paradoxes is that so many speak about India as a great power of the 21st century when we are not yet able to feed, educate and employ all our people.

Clearly, for France in her present position, intelligent activity consists of practicing a policy of entente with Germany in order to survive

If Germany wins, she will dominate France; the independence of Belgium, Holland, Denmark, and perhaps of Norway and Sweden, will be a mere shadow; their separate existence as nations will be fiction; all their harbours will be at Germany's disposal; she will dominate the whole of Western Europe, and this will make our position quite impossible. We could not exist as a first class State under such circumstances.

For four hundred years the foreign policy of England has to oppose the strongest, most aggressive, most dominating Power on the Continent …

All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means.

Let them [France and Germany] especially put their demands in such a way that Great Britain could say that she supported both sides.

Let the natural process of war among nations smother the weak.

We [the French] have to keep defending our vital interests …, we can say no, alone, to anything that may be unacceptable.

Germany is a young and growing empire. She has a worldwide commerce which is rapidly expanding, and to which the legitimate ambition of patriotic Germans refuses to assign any bounds. Germany must have a powerful fleet to protect that commerce and her manifold interests in even the most distant seas. She expects those interests to go on growing, and she must be able to champion them manfully in any quarter of the globe. Her horizons stretch far away.

Our foreign policy is to regain our colonies. We cannot admit that the riches of the world should be divided between Powers, great and even small ones like Belgium or Holland, and that Germany should be completely deprived of them. One day or another, this colonial question will have to be settled. But, for the time being, the Governments of the countries concerned are too much under the pressure of the opposition parties to allow a free discussion.

She certainly is a great queen, and were she only a Catholic she would be our dearly beloved. Just look how well she governs; she is only a woman, only mistress of half an island, and yet she makes herself feared by Spain, by France, by the Empire, by all.