Nicholas Brady Quotes

The best way to give these negotiations a chance, is to keep them private.

Negotiating in the classic diplomatic sense assumes parties more anxious to agree than to disagree.

By the way, if you do your job on behalf of your country, you have meetings where you put your position forward strongly, and the other side does the same thing. And I've had plenty of meetings in my career that really were heated, people yelling at each other.

I don't think that anybody should be ruling in or ruling out anything while we are conducting diplomacy.

Every diplomatic breakthrough is preceded by a crisis, but not every crisis leads to a breakthrough.

Conciliation is the enemy.

The art of diplomacy is to take your humiliations in private.

What is said in public [regarding ongoing political negotiations] is often very different than what is said in private.

If after negotiations there are still some differences outstanding between us, the differences will be adjusted by arms.

We have had enough of meetings for meetings’ sake in the Middle East.

I am sick of answering questions about the fucking peace process.

The negotiations required here make the Paris Peace talks seem like a polite school conference.

I love to negotiate things, I do it really well, and all that stuff. But it's possible I won't be able to get along with Putin.

I have always said that a conference was held for one reason only, to give everybody a chance to get sore at everybody else. Sometimes it takes two or three conferences to scare up a war, but generally one will do it.

When a nation issues ultimatums, it leaves no room for compromise and ensures that war will continue.

General, unless he offers us honorable terms, come back and let us fight it out!

No deal means a greater chance of more war in the Middle East.

Diplomacy is much more than just talking to your friends... You've got to talk to people who aren't our friends, and even people you dislike.

In most cases, cables are marked secret not because the U.S. requires it but because those speaking to us - the foreign leaders across the table - do. They are not keeping secrets from us, but from two other groups: their enemies and their subjects.

I look forward to these confrontations with the press to kind of balance up the nice and pleasant things that come to me as president.

Information is a negotiator's greatest weapon.

I'm simply saying that there are advantages in sending a skilled diplomat who can always say, 'I'll get back to you on that, Mr. Minister'.

We always have hoped that American diplomacy deploys itself in dialogue and persuasion rather than by ultimatums. That is the path we want in international relations.

If you aren't please tell me how you are going to not have a war.

Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock.