Never hate your enemies. It affects your judgment.
– Mario Puzo
Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forward to the trip.
– Winston Churchill
Diplomacy is telling someone to “Go to Hell” in such a way, that they look forward to taking the trip.
A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but never remembers her age.
– Robert Frost
The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.
– Sun Tzu
I observe and remain silent.
– Elizabeth I Tudor
He who has learned to disagree without being disagreeable has discovered the most valuable secret of a diplomat.
– Robert Estabrook
Diplomacy is the art of telling plain truths.
– Winston Churchill
Diplomacy is the art of saying “Nice Doggie” until you can find a rock.
– Will Rogers
Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.
Diplomacy is the art of letting someone have your way.
– Daniele Vare
When diplomacy ends, War begins.
– Adolf Hitler
A diplomat is a man who thinks twice before he says nothing.
– Edward Heath
A diplomat thinks twice before saying nothing.
Truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is hypocrisy.
– Warren W. Wiersbe
Look and see which way the wind blows before you commit yourself.
– Aesop
Don’t hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft!
– Theodore Roosevelt
Diplomacy is thinking twice before saying nothing.
All war represents a failure of diplomacy.
– Tony Benn
When a diplomat says yes, he means perhaps; when he says perhaps, he means no; when he says no, he is no diplomat.
He who walks in the middle of the road gets hit from both sides.
– George P. Shultz
When a diplomat says yes he means perhaps; when he says perhaps he means no; when he says no he is no diplomat.
If you need something from somebody always give that person a way to hand it to you.
– Sue Monk Kidd
The principle of give and take is the principle of diplomacy – give one and take ten.
– Mark Twain
In the world of diplomacy, some things are better left unsaid.
– Lincoln Chafee
In order to be a diplomat, one must speak a number of languages, including doubletalk.
– Carey Williams
A real diplomat is one who can cut his neighbor’s throat without having his neighbor notice it.
– Trygve Lie
Diplomats are useful only in fair weather. As soon as it rains they drown in every drop.
– Charles de Gaulle
Diplomacy, of course, is a subtle and nuanced craft, so much so that it’s said that when the most wily diplomat of the nineteenth-century passed away, other diplomats asked, on reports of his death, “What do you suppose the old fox meant by that?”
– Ronald Reagan
Tact is the ability to step on a man’s toes without messing up the shine on his shoes.
– Harry S. Truman
To say nothing, especially when speaking, is half the art of diplomacy.
– Will Durant
You’re in America now. Our idea of diplomacy is showing up with a gun in one hand and a sandwich in the other and asking which you’d prefer.
– Jim Butcher
Diplomacy never works.
– Nadia Scrieva
Diplomacy is to do and say The nastiest thing in the nicest way.
– Bisaac Goldberg
Diplomacy is a game of chess in which the nations are checkmated.
– Karl Kraus
A diplomat is a man who can juggle a hot potato long enough for it to become a cold issue.
– Vernon K. Mclellan
Diplomacy and virtue do not make easy companions.
– Iain Pears
Diplomats were invented simply to waste time.
– David Lloyd
To win the people, always cook them some savoury that pleases them.
The gateway to compromise is not war, yet communication and diplomacy.
An ambassador is an honest man sent abroad to lie and intrigue for the benefit of his country.
– Henry Wotton
I’m always diplomatic when heavily outnumbered by armed strangers.
– S.M. Stirling
If we think of nations as “actors” on the world stage, diplomats are the stage hands.
– Gregory Adams
Sincere diplomacy is no more possible than dry water or wooden iron.
– Joseph Stalin
diplomacy, n.: The patriotic art of lying for one’s country.
– Ambrose Bierce
Diplomacy: The business of handling a porcupine without disturbing the quills.
In the end, the work of diplomats continues even while others fight. So, it’s not necessarily true that everyone needs to march.
– David Brin
Conversation, like certain portions of the anatomy, always runs more smoothly when lubricated.
– Marquis de Sade
Diplomacy is the velvet glove that cloaks the fist of power.
– Robin Hobb
Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.
What good is a smooth tongue without sharp teeth?
– Jocelyn Murray
Tact – is a weapon of mass harmonization; it brings men of war into terms where guns have failed to yield a single grain of victory.
It is a principle of diplomacy that one must know something of the truth in order to lie convincingly.
– Tom Clancy