Quotes by Diplomats - Page 6

Faith is that which is woven of conviction and set with the sharp mordant of experience.
James Russell Lowell
Do not be afraid of mistakes providing you do not make the same one twice.
Eleanor Roosevelt
If all else fails immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
John Kenneth Galbraith
The only man who makes no mistakes is the man who never does anything.
Eleanor Roosevelt
One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.
James Russell Lowell
Humor is an affirmation of dignity a declaration of man's superiority to all that befalls him.
Romain Gary
The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.
Edward J. Phelps
Optimism is essential to achievement and it is also the foundation of courage and of true progress.
Nicholas Murray Butler
A person buying ordinary products in a supermarket is in touch with his deepest emotions.
J. K. Galbraith
In the end it may well be that Britain will be more honoured by the historians for the way she disposed of an empire than for the way in which she acquired it.
David Ormsby Gore
A torch-light procession marching down your throat.
John L. O'Sullivan
Action will remove the doubts that theory cannot solve.
Tehyi Hsieh
There is nothing certain in a man's life but that he must lose it.
Owen Meredith
We are but as the instrument of Heaven. Our work is not design but destiny.
Owen Meredith
Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide ... And the choice goes by forever t'wixt that darkness and that light.
James Russell Lowell
We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours.
Dag Hammarskjöld
No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time.
Henry Kissinger
There is a point at which everything becomes simple and there is no longer any question of choice because all you have staked will be lost if you look back. Life's point of no return.
Dag Hammarskjöld
The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.
Henry Kissinger
Wisdom consists in being able to distinguish among dangers and make a choice of the least harmful.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Decide which is the line of conduct that presents the fewest drawbacks and then follow it out as being the best one because one never finds anything perfectly pure and unmixed or exempt from danger.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Somehow we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Nature fits all her children with something to do He who would write and can't write can surely review.
James Russell Lowell
There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
Henry Kissinger
In creating the only hard thing's to begin A grass-blade's no easier to make than an oak.
James Russell Lowell
Nature they say doth dote And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan Repeating us by rote.
James Russell Lowell
One change always leaves the way open for the establishment of others.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Change means the unknown.
Eleanor Roosevelt
When people are least sure they are often most dogmatic.
John Kenneth Galbraith
The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinion.
James Russell Lowell
What one has to do usually can be done.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Life only demands from you the strength you possess.
Dag Hammarskjöld
Freedom is not for the timid.
Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit
If you are scared to go to the brink you are lost.
John Foster Dulles
Necessity does the work of courage.
Nicholas Murray Butler
Optimism is the foundation of courage.
Nicholas Murray Butler
Fate loves the fearless.
James Russell Lowell
You can surmount the obstacles in your path if you are determined courageous and hardworking. ... Do not fear to pioneer to venture down new paths of endeavor.
Ralph J. Bunche
Prudence which degenerates into timidity is very seldom the path to safety.
Viscount Cecil
Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air.
John Quincy Adams
Only one feat is possible: not to have run away.
Dag Hammarskjöld
I believe in the gods. Or rather I believe that I believe in the gods. But I don't believe that they are great brooding presences watching over us I believe they are completely absent-minded.
Jean Giraudoux
Every man in it is a great man an orator a critic a statesman and therefore every man upon every question must show his oratory his criticism and his political abilities.
John Adams
Compromise makes a good umbrella but a poor roof it is a temporary expedient often wise in party politics almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship.
James Russell Lowell
He who walks in the middle of the road gets hit from both sides.
George P. Shultz
The principle of neutrality ... has increasingly become an obsolete conception and except under very special circumstances it is an immoral and shortsighted conception.
John Foster Dulles
I could not at any age be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on. Life was meant to be lived. Curiosity must be kept alive. One must never for whatever reason turn his back on life.
Eleanor Roosevelt
When you have decided what you believe what you feel must be done have the courage to stand alone and be counted.
Eleanor Roosevelt
The itch of disputing is the scab of the churches.
Sir Henry Wotton
Let us be of good cheer remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never happen.
James Russell Lowell
Who knows nothing base Fears nothing known.
Owen Meredith
Character building begins in our infancy and continues until death.
Eleanor Roosevelt
There is a certain relief in change even though it be from bad to worse as I have found in travelling in a stagecoach that it is often a comfort to shift one's position and be bruised in a new place.
Washington Irving
There is a certain relief in change even though it be from bad to worse as I have found in traveling in a stagecoach it is often a comfort to shift one's position and be bruised in a new place.
Washington Irving
The time is ripe and rotten-ripe for change then let it come.
James Russell Lowell
We emphasize that we believe in change because we were born of it we have lived by it we prospered and grew great by it. So the status quo has never been our god and we ask no one else to bow down before it.
Carl T. Rowan
O visionary world condition strange Where naught abiding is but only change.
James Russell Lowell
Benefits should be granted little by little so that they may be better enjoyed.
Niccolò Machiavelli
In all modern depressions recessions or growth-correction as variously they are called we never miss the goods that are not produced. We miss only the opportunities for the labour - for the jobs - that are not provided.
J. K. Galbraith
In economics the majority is always wrong.
J. K. Galbraith