Alan Lightman Quotes

Diplomacy is to do and say the nastiest things in the nicest way.

It is very difficult to deliver nuance in a campaign. Campaigns are about contrasts.

The Politician uses the language of diplomacy of which he is a master, and it consists in telling some of the truth without necessarily exhausting it.

Do we seek delicate phraseology in politics or other forms of public life? We do not.

A message is something that makes sense no matter who you're running against.

Diplomacy is the art of telling people to go to hell in such a way that they ask for directions.

This business of saying the same thing over and over and over again – which to a lot of Washington insiders and pundits is boring – works.

Political discourse has been reduced to "Where's the beef?" "Read my lips," and "Make my day." Where are the assassins when we really need them?

Carl Sagan always used to say that when he was trying to explain something to someone, he would go back to that time when he didn't understand it, and then he would retrace his thought steps so that he could make it absolutely clear, and that's one of the infinite number of things I learned from him.

It is sometimes hard to know what Sarah Palin means, just on a day to day basis. Sometimes it is hard to follow what she is talking about.

Talking with most people usually involves a search for truth. Talking with congressmen is strictly special effects.

Donald Trump brought up the issue of the birth certificate and it's getting huge buzz around the country. Even Chris Matthews has called for, you know, the birth certificate to be released. Why can't they just release the birth certificate, you know, and just move on?

A hare is not caught with a drum.

It was announced that President Obama and his wife, when they're finished in Washington, are moving to New York City. The guy just can't get enough gridlock.

I could give any woman in the world a piece and a move; to Gaprindashvili even, a knight.

Triangulation is not a strategy that will move America forward.

Rhetoric matters, but at the end of the day policy matters more.

Leave words to them whom words, not doings, move.

Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion.

I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience.

I am a story teller. If I wanted to send a message I would have written a sermon.

Perhaps the choice is a negative one, in that I was trying to avoid everything that touched on well-known issues - or any issues at all, whether painterly, social or aesthetic. I tried to find nothing too explicit, hence all the banal subjects; and then, again, I tried to avoid letting the banal turn into my issue and my trademark. So it's all evasive action, in a way.

You listen to a politician making a speech, and it is like hearing nothing. Whereas, music is unmistakably music. The thing about music is that nobody listens to it unless it's real. I don't think that you can fool anybody for too long in music. And you certainly can't fool everybody.

Sarah Palin kept talking and talking, and the more she talks, the less compelling she can be. People say, "She's a very good politician, very deft at what she does," and whatever. And I hear that sometimes and go, "I don't know much about this stuff, but I would say no." Because the really good politician expands the audience, not contracts it. She may be getting a very vocal crowd, but it's a very specific group.

Communication in every which way is everything for the leader.