Foreign Affairs Quotes

Louella remarked that when foreign nations had intercourse with this country they knew they had been intercoursed. ~ Jack Woodford

It's simply not true that Donald Trump has no experience in foreign affairs. Hell, two of his foreign affairs resulted in marriages! ~ Michael R. Burch

He had conquered murder only to be faced with war. There were no laws for that. ~ T.H. White

Our best presidents have really combined domestic leadership with heroic achievements in foreign affairs or war. ~ Allan Lichtman

I argue that even as the war is framed in certain ways to control and heighten affect in relation to the differential grievability of lives, so war has come to frame ways of thinking multiculturalism and debates on sexual freedom, issues largely considered separate from foreign affairs. ~ Judith Butler

I don't think you lose anything by hallucinating. It's cheaper than airfare, the destinations more interesting, and I'd rather have a mutant squid on my window than the State Department trying to do foreign affairs. ~ Fred Reed

If it's wrong when they do it, it's wrong when we do it. ~ Noam Chomsky

The limitations imposed by democratic political practices makes it difficult to conduct our foreign affairs in the national interest. ~ Dean Acheson

[T]here seems to have been an actual decline in rational thinking. The United States had become a place where entertainers and professional athletes were mistaken for people of importance. They were idolized and treated as leaders; their opinions were sought on everything and they took themselves just as seriously-after all, if an athlete is paid a million or more a year, he knows he is important ... so his opinions of foreign affairs and domestic policies must be important, too, even though he proves himself to be ignorant and subliterate every time he opens his mouth. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

Foreign policy is a matter of costs and benefits, not theology. ~ Fareed Zakaria

For years now, long before I became House majority leader, I have been passionate about foreign affairs because I believe that anyone who leads in Washington must appreciate the significance of America's role in providing for global security and prosperity. ~ Kevin McCarthy

Americans, being a moral people, want their foreign policy to reflect the values we espouse as a nation. But Americans, being a practical people, also want their foreign policy to be effective. ~ George Shultz

My politics are very centrist and sometimes, especially when it comes to foreign affairs, lean to the right. ~ Peter Landesman

Watching foreign affairs is sometimes like watching a magician; the eye is drawn to the hand performing the dramatic flourishes, leaving the other hand - the one doing the important job - unnoticed. ~ David K. Shipler

Almost everything Truman did in foreign affairs I approve of. ~ Stephen Ambrose

People are always asking me in interviews, 'What do you think of foreign affairs?' I just say, 'I've had a few.' ~ Dolly Parton

said Yitzhak Rabin, addressing the first full meeting of the Israeli Cabinet since the crisis had begun on Sunday, 'I want to say that any information that leaks out today can end up costing lives. So I ask you not to behave normally regarding this issue.' In other words, speak to no one. An hour and a half earlier he had met with Yitzhak Navon, the chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs ~ Saul David

Waiting for me in Stockholm will be a personal assistant - Katrina from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs - as well the secretary of the Swedish Academy. They'll help us with our things and take us to our hotel. From the moment I arrive, I'll always be together with the other two laureates. ~ Ada Yonath

Even if there is no connection between diversity and international influence, some people would argue that immigration brings cultural enrichment. This may seem to be an attractive argument, but the culture of Americans remains almost completely untouched by millions of Hispanic and Asian immigrants. They may have heard of Cinco de Mayo or Chinese New Year, but unless they have lived abroad or have studied foreign affairs, the white inhabitants of Los Angeles are likely to have only the most superficial knowledge of Mexico or China despite the presence of many foreigners.
Nor is it immigrants who introduce us to Cervantes, Puccini, Alexander Dumas, or Octavio Paz. Real high culture crosses borders by itself, not in the back pockets of tomato pickers, refugees, or even the most accomplished immigrants. What has Yo-Yo Ma taught Americans about China? What have we learned from Seiji Ozawa or Ichiro about Japan? Immigration and the transmission of culture are hardly the same thing. Nearly every good-sized American city has an opera company, but that does not require Italian immigrants.
Miami is now nearly 70 percent Hispanic, but what, in the way of authentic culture enrichment, has this brought the city? Are the art galleries, concerts, museums, and literature of Los Angeles improved by diversity? Has the culture of Detroit benefited from a majority-black population? If immigration and diversity bring cultural enrichment, why do whites move out of those very parts of t ~ Jared Taylor

No son of mine is going to be a goddamn liberal, Kennedy interjected. Now, now Joe, Luce answered, of course he's got to run as a liberal. A Democrat has to run left of center to get the vote in the big northern cities, so don't hold it against him if he's left of center, because we won't. We know his problems and what he has to do. So we won't fight him there. But on foreign affairs, Luce continued, if he shows any sign of weakness toward the anti-Communist cause - or, as Luce decided to put it more positively - if he shows any weakness in defending the cause of the free world, we'll turn on him. There's no chance of that, Joe Kennedy had guaranteed; no son of mine is going to be soft on Communism. ~ David Halberstam

Nixon had some large achievements in foreign affairs. They will be remembered. But a president probably gets remembered for one thing, and Watergate will head the Nixon list, I suspect. ~ Bob Woodward

Neville Chamberlain looked at foreign affairs through the wrong end of a municipal drainpipe. ~ Winston Churchill

As Minister of Foreign Affairs. I will work on deepening Haiti's links with its traditional partners from the North and the South, while exploring all the opportunities for economic, cultural, scientific and technological cooperation that may benefit my country. ~ Laurent Lamothe

Most vagabonds i knowed don't ever want to find the culprit that remains the object of their long relentless quest. The obsession's in the chasing and not the apprehending, the pursuit you see and never the arrest" - Tom Waits "Foreign Affairs ~ Tom Waits

I am confident my Hindutva face will be an asset when dealing with foreign affairs with other nations. ~ Narendra Modi

It would be the irony of fate if my administration had to deal chiefly with foreign affairs. ~ Woodrow Wilson

In foreign affairs, the president can do what he wants unless Congress says no. In domestic policy, the president can't do anything unless Congress says yes. ~ Bill Vaughan

I fully, fully concede that Secretary Hillary Clinton, who was secretary of State for four years, has more experience - hat is not arguable - in foreign affairs. ~ Bernie Sanders

One of the foremost activities of the NSA's FAD, or Foreign Affairs Division, is to pressure or incentivize EU member states to change their laws to enable mass surveillance. ~ Edward Snowden

The U.S. public is depoliticised, poorly informed on foreign affairs ... and strongly patriotic in the face of a struggle with another Hitler. Even though the public is normally averse to war, even with modest propaganda efforts ... the public can be quickly transformed into enthusiastic supporters of war. ~ Edward S. Herman

A recurrent theme in Kissinger's early writing is the historical ignorance of the typical American decision-maker. Lawyers, he remarked in 1968, are the "single most important group in Government, but they do have this drawback - a deficiency in history." For Kissinger, history was doubly important: as a source of illuminating analogies and as the defining factor in national self-understanding. Americans might doubt history's importance, but, as Kissinger wrote, "Europeans, living on a continent covered with ruins testifying to the fallibility of human foresight, feel in their bones that history is more complicated than systems analysis."
-Foreign Affairs, The Meaning of Kissinger: A Realist Reconsidered, By Niall Ferguson ~ Niall Ferguson

A Favorite start to a book [sorry it's long!]:

"In yesterday's Sunday Times, a report from Francistown in Botswana. Sometime last week, in the middle of the night, a car, a white American model, drove up to a house in a residential area. Men wearing balaclavas jumped out, kicked down the front door, and began shooting. When they had done with shooting they set fire to the house and drove off. From the embers the neighbors dragged seven charred bodies: two men, three women, two children.
Th killers appeared to be black, but one of the neighbors heard them speaking Afrikaans among themselves. And was convinced they were whites in blackface. The dead were South Africans, refugees who had moved into the house mere weeks ago.
Approached for comment, the SA Minister of Foreign Affairs, through a spokesman, calls the report 'unverified'. Inquiries will be undertaken, he says, to determine whether the deceased were indeed SA citizens. As for the military, an unnamed source denies that the SA Defence Force had anything to do with the matter. The killings are probably an internal ANC matter, he suggests, reflecting 'ongoing tensions between factions.
So they come out, week after week, these tales from the borderlands, murders followed by bland denials. He reads the reports and feels soiled. So this is what he has come back to! Yet where in the world can one hide where one will not feel soiled? Would he feel any cleaner in the snows of Sweden, reading at a dist ~ J.M. Coetzee

At the beginning, because the lives of the hostages were at stake, then during this silent period we have taken several measures like not accepting the ultimatum of the terrorists threatening to kill our foreign affairs minister. ~ Alberto Fujimori

The very phrase 'foreign affairs' makes an Englishman convinced that I am about to treat of subjects with which he has no concern. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

The issue of war or peace is an issue that concerns not only experts on Foreign Affairs but every citizen of the United States. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Flemming Axmark, and Preben Hansen. The Royal Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Copenhagen: Nordisk ~ Nete Schmidt

I don't believe I'll ever get credit for anything I do in foreign affairs, no matter how successful it is, because I didn't go to Harvard. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

The overall U.S. homeownership rate increased from 64 percent in 1994 to a peak in 2004 with an all-time high of 69.2 percent. Real estate had become the leading business in America, more and more speculators invested money in the business. During 2006, 22 percent of homes purchased (1.65 million units) were for investment purposes, with an additional 14 percent (1.07 million units) purchased as vacation homes.

These figures led Americans to believe that their economy was indeed booming. And when an economy is booming nobody is really interested in foreign affairs, certainly not in a million dead Iraqis. But then the grave reality dawned on the many struggling, working class Americans and immigrants, who were failing to pay back money they didn't have in the first place.

Due to the rise in oil prices and the rise of interest rates, millions of disadvantaged Americans fell behind. By the time they drove back to their newly purchased suburban dream houses, there was not enough money in the kitty to pay the mortgage or elementary needs. Consequently, within a very short time, millions of houses were repossessed. Clearly, there was no one around who could afford to buy those newly repossessed houses. Consequently, the poor people of America became poorer than ever.

Just as Wolfowitz's toppled Saddam, who dragged the American Empire down with him, the poor Americans, that were set to facilitate Wolfowitz's war, pulled down American capitalism as we ~ Gilad Atzmon

To divine the course of world events, you'd do as well to probe the entrails of dead animals. Better still, ask your hairstylist. She will be at least as insightful and probably more entertaining a prophet than anyone you can read in Foreign Affairs or the op-ed page of the Washington Post. ~ Andrew Bacevich

The humanitarian would, of course, have us meddle in foreign affairs as part of his program of world service. ~ Irving Babbitt

Ladies and gentlemen, it is with great sadness that I announce that I will resign as Australia's Minister for Foreign Affairs. I am sad because I love this job. I'm totally dedicated to the work that we are doing in Australia's name around the world, and I believe that we have achieved many good results for Australia, and I'm proud of them. ~ Kevin Rudd

A foreign affair juxtaposed with a stateside
and domestically approved romantic fancy
is mysteriously attractive due to circumstances knowing
it will only be parlayed into a memory ~ Tom Waits

Americans are inclined to see the world and foreign affairs in black and white. ~ Richard Kerry

We have been using foreign affairs ministries to address security issues, but this practice is outdated. It's time to assign the handling of regional security to national organizations and expert institutions. ~ Enrique Pena Nieto

We have the responsibility to ensure that our first impulse in foreign affairs is one of bipartisanship. ~ Richard Lugar

Power must be used, but it must be tempered by soul-searching and the recognition of our human capacity for error. That is the maxim that should inform our approach to every challenge, from reforming state government to engaging in foreign affairs. ~ Eliot Spitzer

Prince Felipe is the best ambassador for Spain: I have already told Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo, minister of foreign affairs, that the prince should travel to the U.S. more often. ~ James Costos

Thus all civilian officials and military officers in the United States government who either knew or should have known that the Reagan administration intended to assassinate Qaddafi and participated in the bombing operation are "war criminals" according to the U.S. government's own official definition of that term. The American people should not have permitted any aspect of their foreign affairs and defense policies to be conducted by acknowledged "war criminals." They should have insisted upon the impeachment, dismissal, resignation, and prosecution of all U.S. government officials guilty of such war crimes. Nevertheless, U.S. public opinion had been so effectively brutalized by five years of Reaganism that over three-quarters of the American people rallied to the support of their demented leadership over the destruction, injuries, and death it had inflicted upon hundreds of innocent civilians in Tripoli and Benghazi. ~ Francis A. Boyle

The Daily Telegraph reported on April 9, 1937: 'Since M. Litvinoff ousted Chicherin, no Russian has ever held a high post in the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs.' It seems that the Daily Telegraph was unaware that Chicherin's mother was a Jewess. The Russian Molotov, who became Foreign Minister later, has a Jewish wife, and one of his two assistants is the Jew, Lozovsky. It was the last-named who renewed the treaty with Japan in 1942, by which the Kamchatka fisheries provided the Japanese with an essential part of their food supplies. ~ Arnold Leese

A circular letter from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to all German authorities abroad shortly after the November pogroms of 1918 stated: "The emigration movement of only about 100,000 Jews has already sufficed to awaken the interest of many countries to the Jewish danger.... Germany is very interested in maintaining the dispersal of Jewry... the influx of Jews in all parts of the world invokes the opposition of the native population and thereby forms the best propaganda for the German Jewish policy.... The poorer and therefore more burdensome the immigrating Jews is to the country absorbing him, the stronger the country will react. ~ Hannah Arendt

Once the government can demand of a publisher the names of the purchasers of his publications, the free press as we know it disappears. Then the spectre of a government agent will look over the shoulder of everyone who reads. The purchase of a book or pamphlet today may result in a subpoena tomorrow. Fear of criticism goes with every person into the bookstall. The subtle, imponderable pressures of the orthodox lay hold. Some will fear to read what is unpopular, what the powers-that-be dislike. When the light of publicity may reach any student, any teacher, inquiry will be discouraged. The books and pamphlets that are critical of the administration, that preach an unpopular policy in domestic or foreign affairs, that are in disrepute in the orthodox school of thought will be suspect and subject to investigation. The press and its readers will pay a heavy price in harassment. But that will be minor in comparison with the menace of the shadow which government will cast over literature that does not follow the dominant party line. If the lady from Toledo can be required to disclose what she read yesterday and what she will read tomorrow, fear will take the place of freedom in the libraries, book stores, and homes of the land. Through the harassment of hearings, investigations, reports, and subpoenas government will hold a club over speech and over the press."

[United States v. Rumely, 345 U.S. 41 (1953)] ~ William O. Douglas

Encounters taking the form of challenge-and-response are the most illuminating kind of events a for student of human affairs if he believes, as I believe, that one of the most distinctive characteristics of Man is the he is partially free to make choices ... Encounters are the occasions in human life on which freedom and creativity come into play and on which new things are brought into existence. ~ Arnold Joseph Toynbee

The reader of almost any motivational or success-oriented book has urgent needs, often financial. But the dedicated seeker--the person whose questions are persistent and ever deepening--will inevitably find that the quest for a "better way" in material affairs broadens to include the meaning and nature of all of life. The sincere search for a "better way" leads to questions of purpose and existence. ~ Mitch Horowitz

When I was in college, I became interested in various aspects of foreign policy and international relations. Even as a kid, I was interested in what I call, loosely speaking, forbidden knowledge. ~ Barry Eisler

I work on the Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees to keep us safe at home and strong in the world. ~ Tim Kaine

Again: there is nothing inherently superior about resistance. All our claims for the righteousness of resistance rest on the rightness of the claim that the resisters are acting in the name of justice. And the justice of the cause does not depend on, and is not enhanced by, the virtue of those who make the assertion. It depends first and last on the truth of a description of a state of affairs that is, truly, unjust and unnecessary. ~ Susan Sontag

In the Affairs of this World Men are saved, not by Faith,
but by the Lack of it. ~ Benjamin Franklin

About 2500 years ago Aeschylus, the Greek playwright, wrote, He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God. These remarkable photos and the stories that accompany them should be on billboards from sea to shining sea, so the pain and suffering they represent might fall drop by drop upon the American psyche and against our will, by the awful grace of God, wisdom might come to these United States and her foreign policy. ~ Gioconda Belli

It is a wholly deplorable state of affairs when specialists in any discipline talk only to each other, and accordingly I have sought to write a book which will communicate some of the fruits of research in a manner which will make them accessible to all. ~ Richard Fletcher

Life is a journey through a foreign land. ~ O.R. Melling

It is a small soul, buried beneath the weight of affairs, that does not know how to get clean away from them, that cannot put them aside and pick them up again. ~ Michel De Montaigne

My parents find me hilarious. They don't pull me up for anything because I'm a good daughter. I stay at home, don't party too much, people don't talk about my affairs or that I am unprofessional. In fact, people tell my parents that I'm so well-brought up. Yes, I tend to shoot my mouth off, but they don't pull me up for that. ~ Sonam Kapoor

She had not the strength to come to life now, in England, so foreign, skies so hostile. She knew she would die like an early, colourless, scentless flower that the end of the winter puts forth
mercilessly. And she wanted to harbour her modicum of twinkling life. ~ D.H. Lawrence

I could never see a book written in a foreign language without the most ardent desire to read it. ~ Bayard Taylor

Whatever he had lost, be it his money, his friends, his reputation, his self-respect, his inner joy and peace - one or all - he still remained his father's child. And so he says to himself: "How many of my father's hired men have all the food they want and more, and here am I dying of hunger! I will leave this place and go to my father and say: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired men." With these words in his heart, he was able to turn, to leave the foreign country, and go home. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

In all of human history no country or no people have suffered such terrible slavery, conquest and foreign oppression and no country and no people have struggled so strenuously for their emancipation than Sicily and the Sicilians. ~ Karl Marx

Talbott understood that Nixon's private hospitality and his public obsession with U.S.-Russian relations were part of an elaborate rehabilitation scheme, designed to blur lingering memories of Watergate while serving as a reminder of his own, widely praised foreign policy accomplishments when he was president. ~ Nancy Gibbs; Michael Duffy

I think the three Mexican directors - Alejandro Inarritu, Alfonso Cuaron, Guillermo del Toro - gave all of us foreign, and particularly Latino, directors a big break. ~ Patricia Riggen

He was also glad that Wainwright was late, for that would give him a slight moral advantage when the interview opened. Such trivialities played a greater part in human affairs than anyone who set much store on logic and reason might wish. ~ Anonymous

As the duties of superintending the national defense and of securing the public peace against foreign or domestic violence involve a provision for casualties and dangers to which no possible limits can be assigned, the power of making that provision ought to know no other bounds than the exigencies of the nation and the resources of the community. ~ Alexander Hamilton

That's why I felt so at home when I went to Africa. It didn't matter that I was halfway around the world in a foreign country, because all those elements are universal. And I think that's one thing about my work: It's universal. ~ Herb Ritts

I have lived too long in foreign parts ~ Henry James

Irwin F. Gellman's Secret Affairs: FDR, Cordell Hull, and Sumner Welles, ~ Larry Kramer

Providence conceals itself in the details of human affairs, but becomes unveiled in the generalities of history. ~ Alphonse De Lamartine

The representative element in a work of art may or may not be harmful, but it is always irrelevant. For to appreciate a work of art, we must bring with us nothing from life, no knowledge of its affairs and ideas, no familiarity with its emotions. ~ Clive Bell

I have long believed that women should play a much bigger part in our affairs. ~ Jo Grimond

The world is a better place when America is willing to lead. ~ Marco Rubio

The more dubious and uncertain an instrument violence has become in international relations, the more it has gained in reputation and appeal in domestic affairs, specifically in the matter of revolution. ~ Hannah Arendt

Among the Mormons, things temporal have always been important along with things eternal, for salvation in this world and the next is seen as one and the same continuing process of endless growth. Building Zion, a literal Kingdom of God on earth, has therefore meant an identity of religious and economic values: in the daily affairs of the Kingdom, Latter-day Saint scriptures call for unity, welfare, and economic independence. ~ Leonard J. Arrington

The dog sniffed at the bonfire like a ship with a wet nose docking at a foreign port. -Mgru ~ Stephen Moles

Udden attack of culture snobbery is a common affliction among policemen of a certain rank and age; it's like a normal midlife crisis only with more chandeliers and foreign languages. ~ Ben Aaronovitch

There were some children round him playing in the dust on the paths. They had long fair hair, and with very earnest faces and solemn attention were making little mountains of sand so as to stamp on them and squash them underfoot.
Pierre was going through one of those gloomy days when one looks into every corner of one's soul and shakes out every crease.
'Our occupations are like the work of those kids,' he thought. Then he wondered whether after all the wisest course in life was not to beget two or three of these little useless beings and watch them grow with complacent curiosity. And he was touched by the desire to marry. You aren't so lost when you're not alone any more. At any rate you can hear somebody moving near you in times of worry and uncertainty, and it is something anyway to be able to say words of love to a woman when you are feeling down.
He began thinking about women.
His knowledge of them was very limited, as all he had had in the Latin Quarter was affairs of a fortnight or so, dropped when the month's money ran out and picked up again or replaced the following month. Yet kind, gentle, consoling creatures must exist. Hadn't his own mother brought sweet reasonableness and charm to his father's home? How he would have loved to meet a woman, a real woman!
He leaped up, determined to go and pay a little visit to Mme Rosémilly.
But he quickly sat down again. No, he didn't like that one! ~ Guy De Maupassant

On our crowded planet there are no longer any internal affairs! ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

In 1953, the United States played a significant role in orchestrating the overthrow of Iran's popular prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh. The Eisenhower administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons, but the coup was clearly a setback for Iran's political development and it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs. ~ Madeleine Albright

I think that American presidents, that position in itself, as well as American foreign policy, it has terrorism in it. CIA agents going to overthrow certain governments - they're using terrorist tactics. They're not going in there like, 'Hey, you wanna have some cake?' ~ Lupe Fiasco

Madison described the state of play well in May 1798: "The management of foreign relations appears to be the most susceptible of abuse of all the trusts committed to a Government, because they can be concealed or disclosed, or disclosed in such parts and at such times as will best suit particular views. ... 22 Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger real or pretended from abroad." Extreme measures ~ Jon Meacham