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.

Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.

Nothing sickens me more than the closed door of a library.

War is the unfolding of miscalculations.

No more distressing moment can ever face a British government than that which requires it to come to a hard, fast and specific decision.

To put away one's own original thoughts in order to take up a book is a sin against the Holy Ghost.

Reasonable orders are easy enough to obey; it is capricious, bureaucratic or plain idiotic demands that form the habit of discipline.

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.

The unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree in the primeval forest which fell without being heard.

Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.

Honor wears different coats to different eyes.

For me, the card catalog has been a companion all my working life. To leave it is like leaving the house one was brought up in.

Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip.

To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse.

Books are humanity in print.

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.

The fleet sailed to its war base in the North Sea, headed not so much for some rendezvous with glory as for rendezvous with discretion.

More than a code of manners in war and love Chivalry was a moral system governing the whole of noble life.

Disaster is rarely as pervasive as it seems from recorded accounts. The fact of being on the record makes it appear continuous and ubiquitous whereas it is more likely to have been sporadic both in time and place.

What is government but an arrangement by which the many accept the authority of the few

HONOR WEARS DIFFERENT COATS TO DIFFERENT EYES.

The better part of valor is to spend it learning to live with differences, however hostile, unless and until we can find another planet.

An essential element for good writing is a good ear: One must listen to the sound of one's own prose.

Diplomats are just as essential to starting a war as soldiers are for finishing it... You take diplomacy out of war, and the thing would fall flat in a week.

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

Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock.

There is no diplomacy like candor.

Diplomacy in general does not resolve conflicts. Wars end not due to peace processes, but due to one side giving up.

Diplomacy is not an end in itself if it does not advance U.S. interests.

All war represents a failure of diplomacy.

Take the diplomacy out of war and the thing would fall flat in a week.

We must continue to pursue peace through diplomacy, but we must also not shrink from our responsibility through the option of strength. We must take advantage of internal resistance and change from within Iran to avert this path of mutual destruction.

You learn, just as you learn good manners, how to approach things with a certain amount of diplomacy.

English, once accepted as an international language, is no more secure than French has proved to be as the one and only accepted language of diplomacy or as Latin has proved to be as the international language of science.

Diplomacy means the art of nearly deceiving all your friends, but not quite deceiving all your enemies.

The safety of the republic being the supreme law, and Texas having offered us the key to the safety of our country from all foreign intrigues and diplomacy, I say accept the key... and bolt the door at once.

The war we are fighting today against terrorism is a multifaceted fight. We have to use every tool in our toolkit to wage this war - diplomacy, finance, intelligence, law enforcement, and of course, military power - and we are developing new tools as we go along.

I don't think that anybody should be ruling in or ruling out anything while we are conducting diplomacy.

Our dependence on foreign energy sources is our Achilles heel, not just in the realm of diplomacy, but in terms of our future as the world's economic leader.

Diplomacy is more than saying or doing the right things at the right time, it is avoiding saying or doing the wrong things at any time.

Humanitarian missions are little different from any other public enterprise, diplomacy included, which is susceptible of misinterpretation by the public, hence ultimately of failure.

I think if I had to do it over again, I'd do it the same way. I would just put more resources into getting the public diplomacy part much stronger than we were able to.

The time draws near, when a radical change must take place for the whole world in the management of diplomacy.

All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means.

Widowhood had done nothing to curb my smart mouth. So much for diplomacy.

And we ought to work our diplomacy first and I think it's a reason it's going to respond increasingly to our diplomacy particularly with the president's direct involvement in the peace process, and I think that's extraordinarily important.

America must continue diplomacy, even as we continue the war, to expand the coalition of the willing to share the burden of war and to share the responsibility and the economic cost of rebuilding Iraq.

Diplomacy, n. is the art of letting somebody else have your way.

I believe the military should be wary of diplomacy until war is declared; then the State Department should keep its nose out and let the military do whatever is necessary to win.