Tony Ferguson Quotes

Wars should be fought with words, not bombs, not weapons. And calm words. I think that wars should be fought over a chessboard and a cup of something to drink.

The best way to solve problems and to fight against war is through dialogue.

I like to win without fighting. But if I can't, then I'm prepared to fight.

I'm a diplomat by nature. I help find the middle ground. I crack a joke and use humour to help resolve potentially vicious situations quickly. It gets things in perspective and helps everyone to see that things aren't as bad as they seem.

Let’s use our brain power and not our fire power and we will get somewhere.

There is never a military solution to any problem.

There is no conflict in the world that cannot be solved.

Violence is my last option.

It's better to get smart than to get mad. I try not to get so insulted that I will not take advantage of an opportunity to persuade people to change their minds.

Sometimes you need conflict in order to come up with a solution. Through weakness, oftentimes, you can't make the right sort of settlement, so I'm aggressive, but I also get things done, and in the end, everybody likes me.

You have to pick your battles on set.

I spent an important part of my life participating in conflicts. But for me, conflict was not the main principle.

There never was a time when, in my opinion, some way could not be found to prevent the drawing of the sword.

My position does not give me the liberty to exclude anything, but my mood tells me there will not be violence.

Better talk than fight, if nothing of sovereign value is anyway lost. Dialogue has achieved more than confrontation in many parts of the world.

I hate fights. I try to talk people out of fighting if I can and if they start I run away.

Our position is that we can sit down and talk to try to solve our problems through dialogue.

Too many problem-solving sessions become battlegrounds where decisions are made based on power rather than intelligence.

Peace is not the absence of conflict. It is the ability to cope with conflict by peaceful means.

There is only one way under high heaven to get the best of an argument—and that is to avoid it.

War should never be entered upon until every agency of peace has failed; peace is preferable to war in almost every contingency. Arbitration is the true method of settlement of international as well as local or individual differences.

The only methods we shall employ will be English ones. The good old English fist.

Diplomacy: the art of jumping into troubled waters without making a splash.

The alternative is not war or doing nothing. Whoever rejects war is not doomed to appeasement.

You can't just answer everything with the application of force. By the time you have to apply force, there's already been a failure, and you're trying to pull your chestnuts out in the worst possible way