Carey Williams Quotes

Diplomats make it their business to conceal the facts.

In the world of diplomacy, some things are better left unsaid.

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

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.

Diplomats were invented simply to waste time.

After four years at the United Nations I sometimes yearn for the peace and tranquility of a political convention.

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

The limits of diplomacy must be acknowledged.

At home you always have to be a politician. When you're abroad you almost feel yourself a statesman.

I'm not some ditzy moron who has no idea how to deal with a diplomat as if they're some exotic animal.

Diplomacy: lying in state.

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 diplomat is a man who thinks twice before he says nothing.

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

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 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 need a president who's fluent in at least one language.

Diplomacy is more than saying or doing the right things at the right time, it is avoiding saying or doing the wrong things at any time.

You ought to dialogue first before you start throwing spears. And I think the U.N. provides an opportunity for dialogue.

Improvising political dialogue is not easy.

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

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.

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

When diplomats meet, they are, of necessity, ambiguous, in order to get an agreement.