Hugh Gaitskell Quotes

I told him that my own opinion was that the time now and the method now to deal with Russia was to keep our mouths shut and let our actions speak for words.

The secret of politics? Make a good treaty with Russia.

There are some people that will be deterred by the fact that we have nuclear weapons... But those people are the folks we can deal with anyway.

The United States has dealt with the Middle East and surrounding regions for many decades in the context of the Cold War.

Great powers engage.

Mr. President, we can't advise you properly on what we should seek with the Soviets until we know what we're planning for on our side.

Today nuclear weapons are a blunt instrument. Problems cannot be solved through bombs. They are of little use. We need logic.

That's the problem with Russia: The world has changed. Europe is not at war, and no one wants to negotiate with us. The world has changed, but Russia prefers to pretend it has not.

But we cannot expect the Soviet Union to show restraint in the face of United States weakness or irresolution. As long as I am president, we will not permit detente to become a license to fish in troubled waters. Detente must be, and I trust will be, a two-way street.

Richard Nixon, famously, conducted his foreign policy according to the 'madman theory': he tried to convince enemy leaders that he was irrational and volatile in an attempt to intimidate them. But this was a potentially useful approach to foreign policy only because it was an act.

A supreme pragmatist, Kissinger was never interested in the art of the impossible - and nor, as a biographer, am I. That is why, having initially been invited to write his entire official biography, I eventually decided to devote myself to writing just one year in his life: 1973.

I think Russia is dangerous, not a superpower. I know what the president is trying to say. I worked for him for five years, not just two.He doesn't want us to overreact. He doesn't want to go back to the Cold War and some superpower competition. But my own view, and I think General Mattis stated something similar today, is that Russia is a challenge for the United States. It is a threat to some of our allies.

There are some who, for varying reasons, would appease Red China. They are blind to history's clear lesson, for history teaches with unmistakable emphasis that appeasement but begets new and bloodier war. It points to no single instance where this end has justified that means, where appeasement has led to more than a sham peace. Like blackmail, it lays the basis for new and successively greater demands until, as in blackmail, violence becomes the only other alternative.

We are not interested in a proxy war. Our objective is to change Russia's behavior.

Whether we report Iran to the council or not, I believe the only way forward is through diplomacy.

It would be easier to be tough on Russian than make a deal. I don't know if we'll make a deal.

The greatest thing I could do is shoot that ship that's 30 miles offshore right out of the water. Everyone in this country will say, oh, that's so great. That's not great. That's not great. I would love to be able to get along with Russia.

Here's the truth: the Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear weapons, and Iran doesn't have a single one. But when the world was on the brink of nuclear holocaust, Kennedy talked to Khrushchev and he got those missiles out of Cuba. Why shouldn't we have the same courage and the confidence to talk to our enemies? That's what strong countries do, that's what strong presidents do, that's what I'll do when I'm president of the United States of America.

In foreign policy, there are times when speaking with one voice - and it doesn't have to be mine - allows us to engage better on issues, and enables us to do things more effectively.

Pat Roberts and I both feel very strongly that when we get to Iran, that we can't make the same mistakes. We have to ask the questions, the hard questions before, not afterwards, and get the right intelligence.

Our public dealings with the Russians can hardly lead to any clear and satisfactory results unless they are preceded by preparatory discussions of the most secret and delicate nature.

Very near the heart of all foreign affairs is the relationship between policy and military power.

There is no area where experience matters more than in war and diplomacy.

We should not conduct a war of nerves to achieve strategic ends.

Diplomacy and force are two sides of the same coin.