Bruce Laingen Quotes

I have always thought that foreign-policy idealism has to be tempered with realism.

Obama's foreign policy is strangely self-centered, focused on himself and the United States rather than on the conduct and needs of the nations the United States allies with, engages with, or must confront.

When it comes to foreign policy, the American people will ultimately reward not the party with the most ambitious vision but the party with the most sober and realistic one.

This is the devilish thing about foreign affairs: they are foreign and will not always conform to our whim.

Kneejerk interventionism or kneejerk isolationism is the wrong course for Britain.

The first thing a diplomat has to do is understand the domestic politics of foreign states.

Congress cannot—nor should it—run foreign policy on a day-to-day basis. That is a truism.

Oh dear. Oh dear. Why do all these old gentlemen feel so confident that they understand foreign affairs.

You cannot have individual foreign policy. You cannot have celebrity foreign policy.

People tend to leave foreign affairs to governments because they think the leaders of government have all the information and know better.

My dog Millie knows more about foreign affairs than these two bozos.

Bill Clinton’s only experience with foreign policy is the fact that he had breakfast at the International House of Pancakes.

People think that it only takes an American decision to solve this or that problem [in foreign affairs].

When I became secretary of state, I felt one of my primary jobs was building relationships around the world.

People are always asking me in interviews, 'What do you think of foreign affairs?' I just say, 'I've had a few.'

I think that America's recovery of a global strategic view is an absolutely essential element of our foreign policy.

In international relations, you don't base your work on hope.

Trump's foreign policy is not so much immoral as it is amoral.

Foreign policy must be about priorities. The United States cannot do everything everywhere.

The art of good foreign policy is to understand and to take into consideration the values of a society, to realize them at the outer limit of the possible.

Today, it is imperative to end this hysteria, to refute the rhetoric of the Cold War and to accept the obvious fact: Russia is an independent, active participant in international affairs. Like other countries, it has its own national interests that need to be taken into account and respected.

I'm a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy.

Well, I think the United States first of all has to recognize the world for what it is.

A great nation like the United States has many and varied interests, and we need both to do business with tyrants and to engage constantly in multilateral diplomacy.

Diplomacy is not an end in itself if it does not advance U.S. interests.