An ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country. ~ Henry Wotton
All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means. ~ Zhou Enlai
The best bunker buster is a diplomat. ~ Scott Ritter

Diplomacy is the art and practice of conducting negotiations between representatives of groups or nations. In an informal or social sense, diplomacy is the employment of tact to gain strategic advantage, one set of tools being the phrasing of statements in a non-confrontational, or social manner. International treaties are usually negotiated by diplomats prior to endorsement by national politicians.

Quotes


A

  • Look and see which way the wind blows before you commit yourself.

B

  • DIPLOMACY, n. The patriotic art of lying for one’s country.
    • Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary (1948), p. 72 (originally published in 1906 as The Cynic's Word Book).
  • 'You're in America now' I said. 'Our idea of diplomacy is showing up with a gun in one hand and a sandwich in the other and asking which you'd prefer.'

C

  • It was this idea (Be nice!) that fueled liberals' rage at Reagan when he vanquished the Soviet Union with his macho "cowboy diplomacy" that was going to get us all blown up. As the Times editorial page hysterically described Reagan's first year in office: "Mr. Reagan looked at the world through gun sights." Yes, he did! And now the Evil Empire is no more.
  • Mr. Scott: Diplomats. The best diplomat I know is a fully activated phaser bank.
  • Dinner was a comedy of diplomacy.
    • Michael Crichton

G

  • It would be some time before I fully realized that the United States sees little need for diplomacy; power is enough. Only the weak rely on diplomacy. This is why the weak are so deeply concerned with the democratic principle of the sovereign equality of states, as a means of providing some small measure of equality for that which is not equal in fact. Coming from a developing country, I was trained extensively in international law and diplomacy and mistakenly assumed that the great powers, especially the United States, also trained their representatives in diplomacy and accepted the value of it. But the Roman Empire had no need for diplomacy. Nor does the United States. Diplomacy is perceived by an imperial power as a waste of time and prestige and a sign of weakness.
  • Diplomacy is to do and say
    The nastiest things in the nicest way.

H

J

L

  • May the pens of the diplomats not ruin again what the people have attained with such exertions.

M

  • A Foreign Secretary—and this applies also to a prospective Foreign Secretary—is always faced with this cruel dilemma. Nothing he can say can do very much good, and almost anything he may say may do a great deal of harm. Anything he says that is not obvious is dangerous; whatever is not trite is risky. He is forever poised between the cliché and the indiscretion.
    • Harold Macmillan, secretary of state for foreign affairs, remarks in the House of Commons (July 27, 1955), Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), House of Commons Official Report, vol. 544, col. 1301.
  • In international relations, sharing food with people from different cultures to break down barriers is called culinary diplomacy.

N

  • While in Britain’s imperial heyday, elite circles communicated with each other via telegraph, newspaper, and radio, America has freed the flow of information for uncounted billions through television, the Internet, and cell phones—making grassroots activism a global reality and citizen diplomacy a major force in a changing world... Although overshadowed in recent years by its endless counter-terror operations and its devastatingly destructive wars across the Greater Middle East and Africa, the United States has nonetheless had a profound...impact upon the world... Long after the damaging excesses of Washington’s hegemonic power—the CIA coups, the torture, the drone killings, and those never-ending wars—fade from memory, the world will still need the more benign dimension of its dominion, particularly the very idea of global governance through international organizations and the rule of law, especially as we face a planet similarly in decline. The loss of all of that would be a loss indeed.
  • These, then, are the qualities of my ideal diplomatist. Truth, accuracy, calm, patience, good temper, modesty and loyalty. They are also the qualities of an ideal diplomacy. But, the reader may object, you have forgotten intelligence, knowledge, discernment, prudence, hospitality, charm, industry, courage and even tact. I have not forgotten them. I have taken them for granted.
    • Sir Harold George Nicolson, Diplomacy (1939), chapter 3, p. 126.
  • There are all sorts of things you have to do in foreign policy, to get along in the world. To lessen tensions and prevent war. You have to hold your nose and deal with beasts. But you don’t have to tell outrageous and insulting lies, and you don’t have to break faith...

R

S

  • When you spend money on defense, on military solutions, it's like surgery. It's painful. It's high-risk. Things go wrong. When you spend money on diplomacy, with our wonderful foreign service officers, it's kind of like going to the clinic and using a variety of different drugs and physical therapy. And when you think about development and soft power, it's preventative medicine. It's those things like working out, taking an aspirin. It's low-cost, low pain, and yet it has long-term benefits. So any military person will tell you, use us as a last resort. Use surgery only when you have to. When you can, use preventative medicine - that's development - or diplomacy, but don't reach for that military instrument too soon... When I look at what we spend on defense, which is pushing up toward $650 to $700 billion dollars a year, as compared to what we spend on diplomacy and development, which is in a couple of dozen billions of dollars a year, the scale is just enormous.
    Secretary of Defense Robert Gates famously said, look, we have more people on a single aircraft carrier - and we have 12 of those, David - than we do in the entire foreign service. And another one is former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, who said, you can spend a lot more money on the military, but if you're not going to spend it on our diplomats and development, you're just going to have to buy me more ammunition. Those are two voices I would listen to. Let's keep this thing in balance.
  • Unequivocally, the most important ships that I deployed to Latin America and the Caribbean were not aircraft carriers, they were hospital ships. They conducted hundreds of thousands of patient treatments all over Central America, the Caribbean, South America.

T

W

  • An ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.
    • Henry Wotton, Written in the album of Christopher Fleckmore (1604).

Z

  • All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means.
    • Zhou Enlai, Saturday Evening Post (27 March 1954); this is a play upon the famous maxim of Clausewitz: "War is the continuation of politics by other means".

See also

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