Statecraft Quotes

He who is firmly seated in authority soon learns to think security, and not progress, the highest lesson in statecraft. (James Russell Lowell)
Study history, study history. In history lies all the secrets of statecraft. View quote
Winston Churchill
For all the sublimity of art, physics, music, mathematics, and other manifestations of human genius, everything depends on the mundane, frustrating, often debased vocation known as politics (and its most exacting subspecialty - statecraft). Because if we don't get politics right, everything else risks extinction. View quote
Charles Krauthammer
When human statecraft attaches a chain to the feet of a free man, whom it makes a slave in contempt of nature and citizenship, eternal justice rivets the other end about the tyrant's neck. View quote
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just
The triviality of the current scene usually put her off, but now she supposed that the politics of the moment always looked petty and stupid; only later did it take on the look of respectable statecraft, of immutable History. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
For my part, I favour an approach to statecraft that embraces principles, as long as it is not stifled by them; and I prefer such principles to be accompanied by steel along with good intentions. View quote
Margaret Thatcher
I look forward to an America which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft. I look forward to an America which will steadily raise the standards of artistic accomplishment and which will steadily enlarge cultural opportunities for all of our citizens. And I look forward to an America which commands respect throughout the world not only for its strength but for its civilization as well. And I look forward to a world which will be safe not only for democracy and diversity but also for personal distinction. View quote
John F. Kennedy
Though the general principles of statecraft have survived the rise and fall of empires, every increase in knowledge has brought about changes in the political, economic, and social structure. View quote
John Boyd Orr
The designs of the paper euros, introduced in 2002, proclaim a utopian aspiration. Gone are the colorful bills of particular nations, featuring pictures of national heroes of statecraft, culture and the arts, pictures celebrating unique national narratives. With the euro, 16 nations have said goodbye to all that. View quote
George Will
I would suggest that we use 5% of the bailout money to endow the Banks of England, which would be established in the counties and cities of England and would be constrained to lend within the county or city. The principal of the endowment would be in trust to the people of that county or city, in perpetuity so that it could not be liquidated by its members, and the balance of power in its corporate governance will be held by a third being held by the Bank of England, a third by its workforce and a third by the civic institutions of the locality. These newly constituted ‘Banks of England' are one of the essential feature of Blue Labour statecraft built upon endowment and institution building. View quote
Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman
In this sterile statecraft, centred on the politics of the maNDalayoni, one's neighbour was always an enemy, and the enemy of an enemy always a friend! Hindu princes, therefore, failed to hang together in the face of a common calamity. In the event, they were hanged separately. (Sita Ram Goel)
Warmed by the instincts of a knightly heart, That roused at once if insult touched the realm, He spurned each Statecraft, each deceiving art, And met his foes, no vizor to his helm. This proved his worth; hereafter be our boast: Who hated Britons hated him the most. View quote
Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston
Our new concept of just power argues that the promotion of justice should be the aim of modern statecraft, not for altruistic reasons, but because it is the only sustainable way that states can promote progress and stability in a globalised world. View quote
Nayef Al-Rodhan
Traditional leadership is based on ascription. In former times, there was some degree of flexibility which enabled change. This was based on prowess in war and statecraft. The British fossilised the system and traditional leaders became government functionaries. Their authority was strengthened by the colonial administration. View quote
Joni Madraiwiwi
What one hears in Ranke. The whisper of statecraft. Not the tramp of democracy's earthquake feet. Not the dull roar of surging opinion. View quote
John W. Campbell
The purpose of democratic statecraft is, or should be, to find the means of ordered liberty in a world condemned to everlasting change. View quote
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
The Chinese Communist Party has it figured out. After 62 years of blunders, horrors, and reversals, they have pulled off a miracle of statecraft, a Staatskunst Wunder. With their 77 million members distributed in hundreds of thousands of cells, they have turned Lenin's crude power cult into a robust, adaptable apparatus of total control that, like God in the universe, is everywhere present but nowhere visible-or is visible only, as with that photograph, in a form so bland the eye turns away in search of something recognizably human. View quote
John Derbyshire