Lyndon B. Johnson Quotes

When the President picks up the phone and calls the Prime Minister, what does it mean to be an ambassador?

Ambassador: In diplomacy, an officer sent into a foreign country as the visible embodiment of his sovereign's hostility.

Ambassadors are the eyes and ears of states.

When the ambassadors of other foreign countries come to Japan to make treaties, they can be told that such and such a treaty has been made with the ambassador of the United States, and they will rest satisfied with this.

Throughout history, ambassadors have always been symbolic incarnations of the sovereignty of their nations and the dignity of their leaders.

If you operate any kind of major diplomacy, you must run some risk.

Tell the Arch-Duchess that she may boss her own immigrants, but she can't boss the American consul.

An ambassador from America! Good heavens what a sound!

The Republics of Colombia, of Mexico, and of Central America have already deputed plenipotentiaries to … a meeting, and they have invited the United States to be also represented there by their ministers. The invitation has been accepted, and ministers on the part of the United States will be commissioned to attend at those deliberations, and to take part in them so far as may be compatible with that neutrality from which it is neither our intention nor the desire of the other American States that we should depart.

Yes, sir, from Constantinople, or from the Brazils; from Turk or Christian; from black or white; from the dey of Algiers or the bey of Tunis; from the devil himself, if he wore a crown, we should receive a minister.

Ambassadors are, by definition, foreign bodies.

I won't let any ambassador have a say about my foreign travels.

The limits of diplomacy must be acknowledged.

There isn't any rule in diplomacy that can't be broken.... There are times when diplomatic principles should be violated, but when you violate them you ought to know you're violating them.

How I have been deceived! I was expecting a diplomatic mission, but you have brought me a quarrel! By virtue of your testimonials I have received you as an ambassador, but I have found you instead a challenger … you give me the impression of having studied many books, but not yet of having graduated to the books of Princes, rather remaining ignorant of the dealings between Kings.

Over the last 40 years, more U. S. ambassadors than generals have been killed in the line of duty. But unlike this country's military, the U. S. Foreign Service is maligned, undercut and underutilized.

If any good reason exists why we should persevere longer in withholding our recognition of the independence and sovereignty of Hayti [sic] and Liberia, I am unable to discern it.... I submit for your consideration the expediency of an appropriation for maintaining a chargé d'affaire near each of these new states.

The job of a diplomat is to be the eyes and the ears of the country he or she is representing.

Her coming here has meant more than anything else President Nixon could have done.

After more than two decades of traveling with American presidents and chief diplomats - on visits to places that have included some of the world's most repressive nations - I am used to watching leaders disappear behind closed doors.

It is an ambassador's duty to stand up for his nation's foreign policy in any era and under any government whatsoever. Ambassadors are, in the full meaning of the term, titled spies.

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.

Diplomats were invented simply to waste time.

The world of high-stakes international diplomacy can be rough and tumble, but it's more often than not a procession of suits and summits, protocol sessions and photo ops.

The real duties of an ambassador are to enter into or follow negotiations between his own government and that of the country to which he is accredited.