And now for something completely different …… According to the Cambridge Dictionary, wisdom is the ability to use one’s knowledge and experience to make good decisions and judgments. Wisdom is often expressed in the form of quotes. Most of the quotes below can be linked to key concepts in International Relations Theory. Can you guess which?
War, Peace & Empire
“It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this inspired in Sparta that made war inevitable” (Thucydides)
“War is the realm of chance, passion and reason”
(Carl von Clausewitz, adapted from original text)
“Der Krieg ist also ein Akt der Gewalt, um den Gegner zur Erfüllung unseres Willens zu zwingen“
(Carl von Clausewitz)
“Der Krieg ist eine bloße Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln“
(Carl von Clausewitz)
“The purpose of war is to make better peace”
(Basil Liddell-Hart)
“La guerre! C’est une chose trop grave pour la confier à des militaires””
(Georges Clemenceau)
“That may be so, but it is also irrelevant”
(North Vietnamese Col. Tu, responding to Col. Harry G Summer’s observation that North Vietnam had never beaten the US on the battlefield)
“La France a perdu une bataille. Mais la France n’a pas perdue la guerre”
(Charles de Gaulle)
“Il est plus facile de faire la guerre que la paix ”
(Georges Clemenceau)
“Kein Plan überlebt die erste Feindberührung ”
“Kein Plan überlebt die erste Feindberührung ”
(Helmuth von Moltke)
“The first casualty when war comes is truth”
(Hiram Johnson)
“Carthago delenda est”
(Cato the Censor)
“Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominbus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appelant”
(Tacitus, quoting Calgacus)
“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori”
(Horace)
“…/ My friend, you would not tell with such high zest/ To children ardent for some desperate glory/ The old Lie: dulce et decorum est pro patria mori”
(Wilfred Owen)
“You fight for your country, but you die for your comrades”
(Soldiers’ motto)
“That’s more than we know”
(Williams, the night before the Battle of Agincourt, responding to the disguised Henry V’s remark that one ‘could not die anywhere so contented as in the king’s company, his cause being just and his quarrel honorable’, William Shakespeare)
“Fear, honour and interest”
(Athenian envoys citing the motives that led Athens to acquire an empire, Thucydides)
“We seem, as it were, to have conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind”
(John Robert Seeley)
“Divide et impera”
(Philip of Macedonia, much practiced by imperial powers, typically rendered in Latin)
“George, the British Empire at present covers a quarter of the globe, while the German Empire consists of a small sausage factory in Tanganyika. I hardly think we can be entirely absolved of blame on the imperialistic front”
(Captain Edmund Blackadder, responding to George’s suggestion that WWI started because of ‘the vile Hun and his villainous empire-building’)
International Politics & Power
“Macht bedeutet jede Chance, innerhalb einer sozialen Beziehung den eigenen Willen auch gegen den Widerstand anderer durchzusetzen, gleichviel worauf diese Chance beruht“
(Max Weber)
“Politik würde für uns also heißen: Streben nach Machtanteil oder nach Beeinflussung der Machtverteilung, sei es zwischen Staaten, sei es innerhalb eines Staates zwischen den Menschengruppen, die er umschließt“
(Max Weber)
"Politics: who gets what, when, how?"
(Harold Lasswell)
"Politics: who gets what, when, how?"
(Harold Lasswell)
“International politics, like all politics, is a struggle for power”
(Henry Morgenthau)
“Order always requires a subtle balance of restraint, force and legitimacy”
(Henry Kissinger)
“Si vis pacem, para bellum”
(Publius Flavius, Vegetius Renatus, also attributed to George Washington, Plato, Shi Ji)
“The Pope? How many divisions has he got”
(Joseph Stalin, after allegedly being told that the Pope opposed a Soviet decision)
“The strong do as they please, the weak suffer as they must”
(Thucydides, Delian Dialogue)
“He may be a son of bitch. But he is our son of a bitch”
(FDR allegedly referring to Nicaragua’s president)
“Nicht durch Reden oder Majoritätsbeschlüsse werden die großen Fragen der Zeit entschieden, sondern durch Blut und Eisen”
(Otto von Bismarck)
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy & Alliances
“It is our policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any proportion of the foreign world“
(George Washington’s warning about entangling alliances in his farewell address)
“We have no eternal allies and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual and those interests it is our duty to follow”
(Lord Palmerston)
“Les traités, vous voyez, sont comme les jeunes filles et les roses: ça dure ce que ça dure!” (Charles de Gaulle)
(Lord Palmerston)
“Les traités, vous voyez, sont comme les jeunes filles et les roses: ça dure ce que ça dure!” (Charles de Gaulle)
“Keep the Russians out, the Germans down and the boys in”
(Lord Ismay, NATO secretary general on the purpose of NATO)
“Der Mensch kann den Strom der Zeit nicht schaffen und nicht lenken, sondern nur auf ihm fahren und steuern, um mit mehr oder weniger Erfahrung und Geschick den Schiffbruch zu vermeiden“
(Otto von Bismarck)
“Speak softly and carry a big stick”
(Teddy Roosevelt)
“Der Balkan ist mir nicht die Knochen eines einzigen pommerschen Grenadiers wert”
(Otto von Bismarck)
“We have no dog in this fight”
(Secretary of State James Baker, referring to the Balkans in 1994)
“Wenn man sagt, dass man einer Sache grundsätzlich zustimmt, bedeutet das, dass man nicht die geringste Absicht hat, sie in der Praxis durchzuführen“
(Otto von Bismarck)
“La parole a été donnée a l’homme pour dissimuler sa pensée”
(Prince de Talleyrand)
“I wonder what he meant by that”
(variably attributed to Klemens von Metternich and Talleyrand, upon hearing that the Turkish ambassador to the Congress of Vienna had died)
Foreign Policy & Cognition
“The Schleswig-Holstein question is so complicated, only three men in Europe have ever understood it. One was Prince Albert, who is dead. The second is a German professor, who has gone mad. I am the third and I have forgotten all about it”
(Lord Palmerston)
(Lord Palmerston)
“It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”
(Winston Churchill, referring to the USSR)
“A quarrel in a faraway country, between people of whom we know nothing” (Neville Chamberlain, during the Sudeten crisis)
“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts”
(Bertrand Russell)
(Bertrand Russell)
“Well, Lyndon, they may be every bit as intelligent as you say, but I’d feel a whole lot better if just one of them had run for sheriff once”
(House Speaker Sam Rayburn after LBJ extolled the brilliance of the members of JFK’s cabinet)
“The Best and the Brightest”
(Title of David Halberstam’s book about the group of apparently brilliant people and their decisions that led to the full-blown involvement of the US in Vietnam)