Diplomacy and Appeasement

Sunday, May 18, 2008 – Diplomacy and Appeasement  

 

If you can’t go around it, over it, or through it, you had better negotiate with it. ~ Ashleigh Brilliant

 

Diplomacy is a disguised war, in which states seek to gain by barter and intrigue, by the cleverness of arts, the objectives which they would have to gain more clumsily by means of war. ~ Randolph Bourne

 

Diplomacy is the art of saying “Nice doggie” until you can find a rock. ~ Will Rogers

 

Diplomacy is the art of letting someone have your way. ~ Daniele Vare

 

Be polite; write diplomatically; even in a declaration of war one observes the rules of politeness. ~ Otto von Bismarck

 

A real diplomat is one who can cut his neighbor’s throat without having his neighbor notice it. ~ Trygve Lie

 

A diplomat who says “yes” means “maybe” – a diplomat who says “maybe” means “no” – and a diplomat who says “no” is no diplomat. ~ Talleyrand

 

There are a few ironclad rules of diplomancy but to one there is no exception. When an official reports that talks were useful, it can safely be concluded that nothing was accomplished. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

 

I never refuse. I contradict. I sometimes forget. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

 

A diplomat is a person who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip. ~ Caskie Stinnett, Out of the Red, 1960

 

American diplomacy is easy on the brain but hell on the feet. ~ Charles G. Dawes

 

We are the greatest power in the world. If we behave like it. ~ Walter Rostow

 

There is, in world affairs, a steady course to be followed between an assertion of strength that is truculent and a confession of helplessness that is cowardly. ~ Dwight David Eisenhower

 

Animosity is not a policy. ~ Henry Cabot Lodge

 

Don’t hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit softly. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

 

ULTIMATUM, n. In diplomacy, a last demand before resorting to concessions. ~ Ambrose Bierce

 

When envoys are sent with compliments in their mouths, it is a sign that the enemy wishes for a truce. ~ Sun Tzu

 

Diplomacy means all the wicked devices of the Old World, spheres of influence, balances of power, secret treaties, triple alliances, and, during the interim period, appeasement of Fascism. ~ Barbara Tuchman

 

You may gain temporary appeasement by a policy of concession to violence, but you do not gain lasting peace that way. ~ Anthony Eden

 

I trust that a graduate student some day will write a doctoral essay on the influence of the Munich analogy on the subsequent history of the twentieth century. Perhaps in the end he will conclude that the multitude of errors committed in the name of “Munich” may exceed the original error of 1938. ~ Arthur Schlesinger, Jr

 

 

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