Elizabeth I Quotes

If we start seeing one ambassador I don’t know how we’re going to avoid seeing the other 113 …. I don’t see what mileage we get in seeing 80 African ambassadors.

Diplomats were invented simply to waste time.

An ambassador is not simply an agent; he is also a spectacle.

Ambassador: In diplomacy, an officer sent into a foreign country as the visible embodiment of his sovereign's hostility.

I must say I hate our diplomats. I think with few exceptions they are arrogant humbugs and I expect they know it.

Tell the Arch-Duchess that she may boss her own immigrants, but she can't boss the American consul.

An ambassador from America! Good heavens what a sound!

Ambassadors are the eyes and ears of states.

Diplomats make it their business to conceal the facts.

Yes, sir, from Constantinople, or from the Brazils; from Turk or Christian; from black or white; from the dey of Algiers or the bey of Tunis; from the devil himself, if he wore a crown, we should receive a minister.

It will be quite satisfactory if you open them gradually, as the circumstances may require; but the President assures you that this will not be the case if you make a treaty with England first.

The world of high-stakes international diplomacy can be rough and tumble, but it's more often than not a procession of suits and summits, protocol sessions and photo ops.

When the ambassadors of other foreign countries come to Japan to make treaties, they can be told that such and such a treaty has been made with the ambassador of the United States, and they will rest satisfied with this.

Throughout history, ambassadors have always been symbolic incarnations of the sovereignty of their nations and the dignity of their leaders.

Diplomats make it their business to conceal the facts, and politicians violently denounce the politicians of other countries.

The function of a briefing paper is to prevent the ambassador from saying something dreadfully indiscreet. I sometimes think its true object is to prevent the ambassador from saying anything at all.

If you operate any kind of major diplomacy, you must run some risk.

The limits of diplomacy must be acknowledged.

Diplomats are only useful in fair weather. As soon as it rains they drown in every drop.

When there is a quarrel between two states, it is generally occasioned by some blunder of a ministry.

There isn't any rule in diplomacy that can't be broken.... There are times when diplomatic principles should be violated, but when you violate them you ought to know you're violating them.

When the President picks up the phone and calls the Prime Minister, what does it mean to be an ambassador?

There was no authority with which diplomacy could deal.

Over the last 40 years, more U. S. ambassadors than generals have been killed in the line of duty. But unlike this country's military, the U. S. Foreign Service is maligned, undercut and underutilized.

Ambassadors form an exception to the general case of foreigners resident in the country, and they are exempted absolutely from all allegiance, and from all responsibility to the laws of the country to which they are deputed …. A foreign minister and those strictly belonging to the embassy are in general exempt from the criminal jurisdiction of the country to which they go