Mahatma Gandhi Quotes

Let him (the king) also appoint an ambassador who is versed in all sciences, who understands hints, expressions of the face and gestures, who is honest, skilful, and of noble family. Such an ambassador is commended to a king who is loyal, honest, skilful, possessing a good memory, who knows the proper place and time for action, who is handsome, fearless, and eloquent. For the ambassador alone makes kings' allies and separates allies; the ambassador transacts that business by which kings are disunited or not.

Monarches ought to put to death the authors and instigators of war, as their sworn enemies and as dangers to their states.

Many hard comments have been made on my efforts in India from the side of the Congress party, yet I feel content in the deep conviction that the offer I traveled 22,000 miles to discuss with Indian leaders was a real contribution to a solution of our differences.

Churchill knew the importance of peace, and he also knew the price of it. Churchill finally got his voice, of course. He stressed strategy, but it was his voice that armed England at last with the old-fashioned moral concepts of honor and duty, justice and mercy.

He who plays advisor is no longer ambassador.

Diplomacy in a sense is the opposite of writing. You have to disperse yourself so much: the lady who comes in crying because she's had a fight with the secretary; exports and imports; students in trouble; thumbtacks for the embassy.

I'm an ambassador 24 hours a day.

Alliances and partnerships produce stability when they reflect realities and interests.

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

Well, the thing that I learned as a diplomat is that human relations ultimately make a huge difference.

By dedicating so much concentration to the issue of security, bilateral matters pass to a secondary level.

It is fortunate that diplomats have long noses since they usually cannot see beyond them.

The adult way to run a business is to run it more like a country. They have disputes, yet they've actually been able to have huge trade with each other. They're not sending bombs at each other.

Nations keep agreements, keep their treaties so long as they continue to do them good.

When it comes to international negotiations it cannot all be kept confidential and secret. There must be a way of preparing publics for what is being negotiated.

Diplomacy without military capability is nothing more than prayer.

It was good for the Japanese. It was good for the Russians, and it was good for me.

Instead … of an augmentation of military force proportioned to our extension of frontier, I proposed a moderate enlargement of the capital employed in that commerce, as a more effectual, economical, and humane instrument for preserving peace and good neighborhood with them

The limits of diplomacy must be acknowledged.

We won’t be very successful with the Chinese leadership [on human rights issues] if we’re in their face all the time.

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

Diplomats are only useful in fair weather. As soon as it rains they drown in every drop.

Success in diplomacy is often most advantageous when it is incomplete, an adversary needs an honorable path of retreat if we are to achieve our main policy goals through the reputation of our power rather than through the actual use of force.

International negotiation has a nasty tendency to remind its practitioners that the laws of gravity affect them, too, and that international life is a two-way street in which one may have to give in order to get.

Cool, realistic diplomats are prepared to try to negotiate with any type of regime whenever the national interest calls for it; the last thing that should ever be done to turn emotional or "demonize" another foreign leader no matter how nasty he may be.