Statesman Quotes

A politician is a person with whose politics you don't agree; if you agree with him, he is a statesman.

A politician thinks of the next election; the statesman thinks of the next generation

To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan [is] easily the most original thinker in the Senate.

The difference between a politician and a statesman is: a politician thinks of the next election and a statesman thinks of the next generation.

Actuated by these motives, and apprehensive of disturbing the repose of an unsettled reign, Julian surprised the world by an edict which was not unworthy of a statesman or a philosopher. He extended to all the inhabitants of the Roman world the benefits of a free and equal toleration; and the only hardship which he inflicted on the Christians was to deprive them of the power of tormenting their fellow-subjects, whom they stigmatised with the odious titles of idolaters and heretics.

The National defense is one of the cardinal duties of a statesman.

Now, forty years after his passing, Winston Churchill is still quoted, read, revered, and referred to as much, if not more, than when he was alive.

[Charles de Gaulle] has been abysmally careless, like a man running a bus over mountains, who forgot to equip it with good brakes.

Never for a moment, have the responsible and instructed statesmen in charge of the foreign affairs of the United States failed to consider themselves bound to insist upon this policy .... Almost every President and Secretary of State has re-stated the doctrine with vigor and emphasis in the discussion of the diplomatic affairs of his day.

Speaking of Sir Winston Churchill: He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.

It is unnecessary to say that Fidel Castro possesses the high qualities of a fighter and statesman: our path, our struggle, and our triumph we owed to his vision.

One of my American heroes is the great former U.S. diplomat George Kennan.

The role of the scholar is to destroy chimeras, that of the statesman is to make use of them.

Eloquence and wisdom are by no means the same thing. They are sometimes united, but not necessarily ; perhaps never when eloquence is the mere gift of nature rather than the slow result of nature and art conjoined. A ready supply of glittering language and an ardent conception, i. e. a fertile imagination, and quick feelings, united to a retentive memory—these are together quite sufficient to make an orator, but by no means to make a wise man; to make a speaker or even a leader in a popular assembly, but not necessarily a statesman.

There is the sheer amount of Franklin's wisdom. And the talent. Franklin played four instruments. He was the nation's leading scientist and inventor, plus a leading author, statesman, and philanthropist. There has never been anyone like him.

The difference between a politician and a statesman is that a politician thinks about the next election while the statesman think about the next generation

Most British statesman have either drunk too much or womanized too much. I never fell into the second category.

I have great admiration for Atal Bihari Vajapyee.

My father [Pandit Nehru] was a statesman. I'm a political woman. My father was a saint. I'm not.

Now he is a statesman, when what he really wants is to be what most reporters are, adult delinquents.

It is not the principled partisan, however obnoxious he may seem to his opponents, who degrades our public debate, but the preening, self-styled statesman who elevates compromise to a first principle.

My ideal man is Benjamin Franklin-the figure in American history most worthy of emulation ... Franklin is my ideal of a whole man. ... Where are the life-size-or even pint-size-Benjamin Franklins of today?

The only hero known to my childhood was Henry Clay.

Of all our public men of today he stands first in my reverence & admiration, & the next one stands two-hundred-&-twenty-fifth. He is the only statesman we have now. ... Cleveland drunk is a more valuable asset to this country than the whole batch of the rest of our public men sober. He is high-minded; all his impulses are great & pure & fine. I wish we had another of this sort.