There is only thing that is worse than fighting with allies, that is fighting without them (Winston Churchill)
We have no eternal allies and we have no perpetual enemies (Lord Palmerston)
NATO is to keep the Soviets out, keep the Germans down, and the Americans in (Lord Ismay)
It is our policy to steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world (George Washington)
BATLLES
You know how to win a victory, Hannibal, but not how to use it (Maharbal)
You know, you never beat us on the battlefield. Response: That may be so, but it is also irrelevant (Colonel Harry G. Summers to Vietnamese official)
France has lost a battle, but she has not lost the war (Charles de Gaulle)
The insurgent does not need to win, army loses when it does not win etc. (Henry Kissinger).
CREDIBILITY
Now we have a problem in trying to make our power credible and Vietnam looks like the place (JFK)
DIPLOMACY
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)
When you say you agree with a thing in principle, you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice (Otto von Bismarck)
Diplomacy without force is like music without instruments (Frederick the Great)
Diplomacy is the patient accumulation of partial successes (Henry Kissinger)
All war represents a failure of diplomacy (Tony Bennett)
Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially deniedr (Otto von Bismarck)
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)
I wonder what he meant by that? (Talleyrand’s reaction n hearing of the death of the Turkish ambassador)
Le Congres ne marche pas, il danse (Charles Joseph de Lingne)
EMPIRE
Fear, honour and interest (Athenian delegation to Sparta on Athens has acquired an empire in the guise of the Delian League (Thucydides)
Britain acquired its empire in a fit of absentmindedness (Sir John Seeley)
Si vis pacem, para bellum (Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus)
FOREIGN POLICY WONKS
The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools (Thucydides)
Well, Lyndon, they may be every bit as intelligent as you say, but I’d feel a whole lot better if just tone of them had run for sheriff once (House Speaker Sam Rayburn to LBJ after the latter extolled the brilliance of the members of JFK s cabinet)
GEOPOLITICS
I have no way to defend my territory but to extend them (Catherine the Great)
HISTORY
History repeats itself, first tragedy, then as farce (Karl Marx)
Man makes his own history, but he does not make it out of the whole cloth; he does not make it out of the condition chosen by himself, but out of such as he finds close at hand (Karl Marx).
We will go down in history either as the world’s greatest statesmen or its worst villains (Adam Driver)
History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it (Winston Churchill)
History is a set of lies (we have) agreed upon (Napoleon)
INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
International politics, like all politics, is a struggle for power (Hans Morgenthau)a
JUSTIFICATIONS & REASONS
Pleikus are like streetcars (McGeorge Bundy)
It is ours. We should hang on to it. We stole it, fair and square (Senator Hayakawa, opposing the return of the Panama Canal).
MILITARY POWER
The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions — that was the error of 1848 and 1849 —but by iron and blood (Otto von Bismarck)
Prussia is an army that acquired a state (Voltaire)
The Pope? How many divisions has he got (Stalin …. Laval, France, Catholicism). Perhaps in keeping with dialectical materialism, Stalin also coined the phrase:
MORALITY
Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we dislike (Oscar Wilde)
MYSTERIES
How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing (Neville Chamberlain)
I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma (Winston Churchill)
NATIONALISM
Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first (Charles de Gaulle)
Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel (Samuel Johnson, rebuking Willian Pitt the Elder)
My heart is French, my ass is international (Arletty)
Language is a dialect with a navy and an army (Max Weinreich).
We have created Italy, now we need to create Italians (Mazzini)
The flag is a pseudo-archetype, a reflexive semion designed to pre-empt and negate the critical function (Foster Wallace)
ORDER
To strike a balance between the two aspects of world order – power and legitimacy – is the essence of statesmanship (Henry Kissinger)
Order always requires a subtle balance of restraint, force and legitimacy (Henry Kissinger)
PEACE
Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant (Tacitus quoting Calgacus)
It is far easier to make war than peace (Georges Clemenceau)
POLITICS & POWER
Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun (Mao Tse Tung)
Politik ist das Streben nach Macht (Weber)
Die Politik bedeutet ein starkes langsames Bohren von dicken Brettern mit Leidenschaft und Augenmaß zugleich (Max Weber)
Might does not make right (Talleyrand)
Politics is the art of the possible (Otto von Bismarck)
Men naturally despise those who court them, but respect those who do not give way to them (Charles Maurice de Talleyrand)
It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both (Machiavelli)
War gives the right to the conquerors to impose any condition they please on the conquered (Julius Caesar)
PRAGMATISM
We don’t have a dog in this fight (James Baker on war in Bosnia)
Balkans not worth the life of a single Pomeranian grenadier (Otto von Bismarck)
He may be a son of bitch. But he is our son of a bitch (FDR about Somoza)
Americans do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else (Winston Churchill)
it is worse than a crime, it is a mistake (Talleyrand)
How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing (Neville Chamberlain)
I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma (Winston Churchill)
NATIONALISM
Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first (Charles de Gaulle)
Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel (Samuel Johnson, rebuking Willian Pitt the Elder)
My heart is French, my ass is international (Arletty)
Language is a dialect with a navy and an army (Max Weinreich).
We have created Italy, now we need to create Italians (Mazzini)
The flag is a pseudo-archetype, a reflexive semion designed to pre-empt and negate the critical function (Foster Wallace)
ORDER
To strike a balance between the two aspects of world order – power and legitimacy – is the essence of statesmanship (Henry Kissinger)
Order always requires a subtle balance of restraint, force and legitimacy (Henry Kissinger)
PEACE
Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant (Tacitus quoting Calgacus)
It is far easier to make war than peace (Georges Clemenceau)
POLITICS & POWER
Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun (Mao Tse Tung)
Politik ist das Streben nach Macht (Weber)
Die Politik bedeutet ein starkes langsames Bohren von dicken Brettern mit Leidenschaft und Augenmaß zugleich (Max Weber)
Might does not make right (Talleyrand)
Politics is the art of the possible (Otto von Bismarck)
Men naturally despise those who court them, but respect those who do not give way to them (Charles Maurice de Talleyrand)
It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both (Machiavelli)
War gives the right to the conquerors to impose any condition they please on the conquered (Julius Caesar)
PRAGMATISM
We don’t have a dog in this fight (James Baker on war in Bosnia)
Balkans not worth the life of a single Pomeranian grenadier (Otto von Bismarck)
He may be a son of bitch. But he is our son of a bitch (FDR about Somoza)
Americans do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else (Winston Churchill)
it is worse than a crime, it is a mistake (Talleyrand)
PROPGANDA
Since the masses are always eager to believe something, for their benefit nothing is so easy to arrange as facts (Charles Maurice de Talleyrand)
If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it (Joseph Goebbels)
Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it; so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale has had its effect (Jonathan Swift)
The first casualty when war comes is truth (Hiram Johnson)
Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur
Elected leaders always had to shape inchoate public attitudes into support for specific foreign policies (Robert Zoellick)
RHETORIC
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam (Cato the elder)
Dum Rome deliberat, Saguntum perit
Not by speeches and votes of the majority, are the great questions of the time decided — that was the error of 1848 and 1849 — but by iron and blood (Otto von Bismarck)
RISE AND FALL
What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta (Thucydides)
We, my dear Crossman, are the Greeks in the American empire. You will find the Americans much as the Greeks found the Romans – great, big, vulgar bustling people, more vigorous than we are and also more idle, with more unspoiled virtues, but also more corrupt (Harold Macmillan)
REPUTATION
At the moment, he looks like Lord North (Tim Shipman, on historical legacy of David Cameron after Brexit)
STATESMANSHIP
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)
Die ganze Kunst der Politik besteht darin, sich der Zeitumstande richtig zu bedienen (Sun King Louis XIV)
The goods are offended by hubris (Henry Kissinger)
He is almost a statesman. He lies quite well (Napoléon)
Events, dear boy, events (Harold Macmillan on what a prime minister most fears)
Speak softly, carry a big stick (Teddy Roosevelt)
STRATEGY
Strategy is the process whereby political will is translated into military action (Andrew Wilson)
The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and the means can never be considered in isolation from their purposes (Carl von Clausewitz)
The purpose of war is to make a better peace (Basil Liddell-Hart)
The strong do as they please, the weak suffer as they must (Delian dialogue)
Kein Plan überlebt die erste Feindberührung (Helmuth von Moltke)
The commonest error in politics is sticking to the carcasses of dead policies (Duke of Salisbury)
War is too important to be left to the generals (Georges Clemenceau)
THEORY
The primary purpose of any theory is to clarify concepts and ideas that have become confused and entangled (Carl von Clausewitz)
TREATIES
Pacta sunt servanda
Les traités, vous voyez, sont comme les jeunes filles et les roses: ça dure ce que ça dure! (Charles de Gaulle).
U.S. FOREIGN POLICY
Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none (Thomas Jefferson)
America goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy (John Quincy Adams)
Since the masses are always eager to believe something, for their benefit nothing is so easy to arrange as facts (Charles Maurice de Talleyrand)
If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it (Joseph Goebbels)
Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it; so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale has had its effect (Jonathan Swift)
The first casualty when war comes is truth (Hiram Johnson)
Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur
Elected leaders always had to shape inchoate public attitudes into support for specific foreign policies (Robert Zoellick)
RHETORIC
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam (Cato the elder)
Dum Rome deliberat, Saguntum perit
Not by speeches and votes of the majority, are the great questions of the time decided — that was the error of 1848 and 1849 — but by iron and blood (Otto von Bismarck)
RISE AND FALL
What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta (Thucydides)
We, my dear Crossman, are the Greeks in the American empire. You will find the Americans much as the Greeks found the Romans – great, big, vulgar bustling people, more vigorous than we are and also more idle, with more unspoiled virtues, but also more corrupt (Harold Macmillan)
REPUTATION
At the moment, he looks like Lord North (Tim Shipman, on historical legacy of David Cameron after Brexit)
STATESMANSHIP
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)
Die ganze Kunst der Politik besteht darin, sich der Zeitumstande richtig zu bedienen (Sun King Louis XIV)
The goods are offended by hubris (Henry Kissinger)
He is almost a statesman. He lies quite well (Napoléon)
Events, dear boy, events (Harold Macmillan on what a prime minister most fears)
Speak softly, carry a big stick (Teddy Roosevelt)
STRATEGY
Strategy is the process whereby political will is translated into military action (Andrew Wilson)
The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and the means can never be considered in isolation from their purposes (Carl von Clausewitz)
The purpose of war is to make a better peace (Basil Liddell-Hart)
The strong do as they please, the weak suffer as they must (Delian dialogue)
Kein Plan überlebt die erste Feindberührung (Helmuth von Moltke)
The commonest error in politics is sticking to the carcasses of dead policies (Duke of Salisbury)
War is too important to be left to the generals (Georges Clemenceau)
THEORY
The primary purpose of any theory is to clarify concepts and ideas that have become confused and entangled (Carl von Clausewitz)
TREATIES
Pacta sunt servanda
Les traités, vous voyez, sont comme les jeunes filles et les roses: ça dure ce que ça dure! (Charles de Gaulle).
U.S. FOREIGN POLICY
Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none (Thomas Jefferson)
America goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy (John Quincy Adams)
WAR
Der Krieg ist also ein Akt der Gewalt, um den Gegner zur Erfüllung unseres Willens zu zwingen (Carl von Clausewitz)
War is the realm of chance, passion and reason (Carl von Clausewitz)
War is the father of all things (Heraclitus)
War made the state, and the state made war (Charles Tilly)
Vae victis (Brennus)
Wrong war, wrong place, wrong time (Omar Bradley, opposing war with China in 1951)
Waterloo was won the playing fields of Eton (Duke of Wellington)
The history of failure in war can almost always be summed up in two words: too late (Douglas MacArthur)
You fight for your country, but you die for your comrades
How can you ask a man to be the last man to die (John Kerry)
Vietnam was a country where America was trying to make people stop being communists by dropping things on them from airplanes (Kurt Vonnegut)
Der Krieg ist also ein Akt der Gewalt, um den Gegner zur Erfüllung unseres Willens zu zwingen (Carl von Clausewitz)
War is the realm of chance, passion and reason (Carl von Clausewitz)
War is the father of all things (Heraclitus)
War made the state, and the state made war (Charles Tilly)
Vae victis (Brennus)
Wrong war, wrong place, wrong time (Omar Bradley, opposing war with China in 1951)
Waterloo was won the playing fields of Eton (Duke of Wellington)
The history of failure in war can almost always be summed up in two words: too late (Douglas MacArthur)
You fight for your country, but you die for your comrades
How can you ask a man to be the last man to die (John Kerry)
Vietnam was a country where America was trying to make people stop being communists by dropping things on them from airplanes (Kurt Vonnegut)