Diplomatic Missions Quotes

My job is to try to advance American foreign policy, to try to advance the president's agenda on democracy and human rights.

We are coming to realise that foreign operations in today's world call for a total diplomacy ... Ambassadors can no longer be content with wining and dining, reporting, analysing and cautiously predicting.

The Foreign Office is a very important arm of the British state and I think Britain has a fantastic diplomatic service. We are the only country in the world spending 2% of our national income on defence and 0.7% of our national income on aid. We are the only country in the world doing both of those things.

I had to leave the Foreign Service to do the two things I joined it to do—negotiate, and make policy.

With respect to my own husband, I am probably still going to pick the flowers and the china for state dinners and stuff like that. But I will certainly turn to him as prior presidents have for special missions, for advice.

The future does not belong to those who attack our Embassies and Consulates and kill our Ambassadors. The Angel of Death in the form of an American Bald Eagle will visit you and wreak havoc and destruction upon your existence.

Since United States military operations in Iraq began in 2003, I have visited Iraq at least 15 times. But unlike politicians who visit, the question for me has never been why the U.S. got into Iraq. Instead, as the CEO of Blackwater, the urgent question was how the company I head could perform the duties asked of us by the U.S. State Department.

I have a diplomatic passport for India, diplomatic passport for Albania. I have Vatican passport and to America, I can go any time.

As a 4-star admiral, I visited over a hundred U.S. embassies all around the world, and I never failed to see lines of locals seeking visas to our nation.

When Hillary's getting knocked around by the folks on the Hill is Bill going to go Larry King to knock her enemies around? Will he be going off to foreign countries on his own little diplomatic missions? I had assumed he'd remain a step in the background as he has through through most of this decade. But that doesn't seem to be the case. If the constitution allowed it, I'd happily have Clinton back. I'd happily have Hillary in his place. But I don't want them both.

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.

There's something beautiful about working in the one place in the world where the world is present, like United Nations. Otherwise, one would have to go to each of these countries to negotiate.

In the hands of a determined Secretary, the Foreign Service can be a splendid instrument, staffed by knowledgeable, discreet, and energetic individuals. They do require constant vigilance lest the convictions that led them into a penurious career tempt them to preempt decision-making.

Americans who may be going to the largest embassy we've ever had.

It's amazing how many countries run their embassies as commercial outposts to promote businessmen from their country.

Americans rightly, but sometimes excessively, celebrate every person in uniform as a hero, but seldom honor the difficult and often dangerous work being done day after day by members of our diplomatic corps. Warriors capture the popular imagination more easily than peacemakers.

Peace and commerce with foreign nations could be more effectually and cheaply cultivated by a common agent; therefore they gave the Federal Government the sole management of our relations with foreign governments.

For over five years this man [Winston Churchill] has been chasing around Europe like a madman in search of something he could set on fire. Unfortunately he again and again finds hirelings who open the gates of their country to this international incendiary.

The practice of diplomacy, I have found, is sometimes like eating soup with a fork: much activity yielding little nourishment.

From Lady Carlisle's trip to Moscow in 1663 to Veronica Atkinson's tour of duty during the 1989 Romanian revolution, it is clear that very little has changed. Four hundred years of innovation, liberation, and improvement clearly bypassed the Foreign Office while making its rounds through Westminster.

I was working with a number of African heads of state. And after their initial surprise, I think many of them just treated me as they would anybody else. They had to deal with me as a representative of the United States of America, and the United States of America was too important to be dismissed or ignored on any grounds.

Eventually, I was sent to Wales and Germany, and after the war, to Paris.

In the end, the work of diplomats continues even while others fight. So, it's not necessarily true that everyone needs to march.

As secretary of state you can go out in a helmet if you want to. Even in Switzerland in front of reporters.

Even we schoolchildren know that ordinary diplomats don't drive around in unmarked cars carrying Glock pistols.