James F. Byrnes Quotes

We have not been a normal country when it comes to engagement in the world.

I'm a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy.

It's not just Iraq - it's the Atlantic partnership which is at stake.

No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time.

The real danger to Britain is a foreign policy that is isolationist in Europe and therefore weak in the rest of the world.

One of the issues that I've raised on the Foreign Relations Committee, and I raised it when Secretary Locke came for his confirmation hearing, is, you know, it is in our benefit to develop a workable, positive formula with China.

Oh dear. Oh dear. Why do all these old gentlemen feel so confident that they understand foreign affairs.

You cannot have individual foreign policy. You cannot have celebrity foreign policy.

… make Englishmen cognizant of the processes through which the progressive destinies of Europe are being worked out, so that whenever European Affairs may call for interference, they may be in no doubt as to the course to be pursued.

Americans must step back and realize that an effective foreign policy is very difficult to devise, and we must present a united front to make it work.

I do not want Britain to turn its back on Europe or the rest of the world.

I think overall our national security is strengthened if we are able to make the decisions that we need and the alliances that we believe in outside the current structures of the European Union.

Non-alignment will continue to be the fundamental basis of our approach to world problems and our relations with other countries.

I think that America's recovery of a global strategic view is an absolutely essential element of our foreign policy.

I want to show a new vector of policy that will be there when I will become a president. And my vector is friendship with America and friendship with European Union.

One of the things you learn in government is there's a long tail to American decision-making when it comes to foreign policy. Moving the embassy to Jerusalem, pulling out of the Iran deal, pulling out of Paris, not speaking up for democratic values - the world doesn't end the next day.

We believe that government in Britain should be working to restore our reputation on the international stage after Iraq and engage better within Europe.

In the United States, there is a broadly shared view that the U.N. is one of many potential instruments to advance U.S. issues, and we have to decide whether a particular issue is best done through the U.N. or best done through some other mechanism.

Well, I think the United States first of all has to recognize the world for what it is.

This is the devilish thing about foreign affairs: they are foreign and will not always conform to our whim.

Obama's foreign policy is strangely self-centered, focused on himself and the United States rather than on the conduct and needs of the nations the United States allies with, engages with, or must confront.

Isolationism is over.

I remain committed to a balanced policy, which will protect our national interests both on our eastern border - I mean with Russia - and of course with the European Union.

No Western government has ever played the long-term in terms of foreign policy.

Bill Clinton's foreign policy experience stems mainly from having breakfast at the International House of Pancakes.