Statesmen Quotes - Page 3

History is replete with proofs, from Cato the Elder to Kennedy the Younger, that if you scratch a statesman you find an actor, but it is becoming harder and harder, in our time, to tell government from show business.

James Thurber

Government, Becoming, Scratches

James Thurber (1990). “Collecting Himself: James Thurber on Writing and Writers, Humor and Himself”

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These are the times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised, and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant, wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman.

Abigail Adams

Hero, Heart, Character

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A man may be a great statesman, and yet dislike his wife, and like somebody else's. A man may be a great hero, and yet he may have an unseemly passion, or an unpaid tailor. But the British public does not understand this. ... It thinks, unhappily or happily as you may choose to consider, that genius should keep the whole ten commandments. Now, genius is conspicuous for breaking them.

Ouida

Hero, Passion, Men

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Certain it is that a great responsibility rests upon the statesmen of all nations, not only to fulfill the promises for reduction in armaments, but to maintain the confidence of the people of the world in the hope of an enduring peace.

Frank B. Kellogg

Responsibility, People, Promise

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No more than a famous master can be replaced and another take over the completion of the half-finished painting he has left behind can the great poet and thinker, the great statesman and the great soldier, be replaced. For their activity lies always in the province of art. It is not mechanically trained but inborn by God's grace.

Adolf Hitler

Art, Lying, Grace

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When you're out of office, you can be a statesman.

John Connally

Office, Political, Politics

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An insular country, subject to fogs, and with a powerful middle class, requires grave statesmen.

Benjamin Disraeli

Country, Powerful, Fog

Benjamin Disraeli (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Benjamin Disraeli (Illustrated)”, p.4039, Delphi Classics

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He's passed from rising hope to elder statesman without any intervening period whatsoever.

Michael Foot

Political, Rising, Politics

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Terrorist organizations with specific political agendas may be encouraged and emboldened by Yasser Arafat's transformation from outlaw to statesman.

John F. Kerry

Organization, Political, Agendas

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Like the battleships of old, omnibus programs present too tempting a target, too easily destroyed by a single attack, to make it through a fight.... It is through incremental change after change, step after step, that a statesman of today can vindicate a bold vision.

Dick Morris

Fighting, Political, Vision

Dick Morris (2007). “The New Prince: Machiavelli Updated for the Twenty-First Century”, p.179, St. Martin's Press

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To be a statesman, you must first get elected.

J. William Fulbright

Political, Politics, Firsts

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Self-reliance can turn a salesman into a merchant; a politician into a statesman; an attorney into a jurist; an unknown youth into a great leader. All are to be tomorrow's big leaders - those who in solitude sit above the clang and dust of time, with the world's secret trembling on their lips.

Newell Dwight Hillis

Leadership, Self, Dust

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Hitler's success was not based on his extraordinary gifts alone. His genius was an intuitive sense of the mushiness, the character flaws, the weakness masquerading as morality that was in the hearts of the statesmen who stood in his path.

Pat Buchanan

Heart, Character, Scary

"The Bigotry Of Pat Buchanan". www.mediamatters.org. July 29, 2011.

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Midas, they say, possessed the art of old; Of turning whatsoe'er he touch'd to gold; This modern statesmen can reverse with ease - Touch them with gold, they'll turn to what you please.

John Wolcot

Art, Political, Gold

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We need not take refuge in supernatural gods to explain our saints and sages and heroes and statesmen, as if to explain our disbelief that mere unaided human beings could be that good or wise.

Abraham Maslow

Wise, Hero, Saint

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Mere opinions, in fact, were as likely to govern people's actions as hard evidence, and were subject to sudden reversals as hard evidence could never be. So the Galapagos Islands could be hell in one moment and heaven in the next, and Julius Caesar could be a statesman in one moment and a butcher in the next, and Ecuadorian paper money could be traded for food, shelter, and clothing in one moment and line the bottom of a birdcage in the next, and the universe could be created by God Almighty in one moment and by a big explosion in the next--and on and on.

Kurt Vonnegut

Islands, People, Heaven

Kurt Vonnegut (1999). “Galapagos: A Novel”, Dial Press

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Let divines and philosophers, statesmen and patriots, unite their endeavors to renovate the age by impressing the minds of men with the importance of educating their little boys and girls, inculcating in the minds of youth the fear and love of the Deity... and leading them in the study and practice of the exalted virtues of the Christian system.

Samuel Adams

Girl, Christian, Men

Samuel Adams (1968). “The Writings of Samuel Adams: 1778-1802”

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In history-as-politics, the 'future' is that vacuum in time waiting to be filled with the antics of statesmen.

Edward Abbey

Waiting, Vacuums, Antics

Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.17, RosettaBooks

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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.

Tom DeLay

Self, Political, Principles

Farewell Address to House of Representatives, delivered 8 June 2006

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As a historian, he felt it his duty to respect everything that had ever been respected, except for the occasional statesman.

Henry Adams

Political, Politics, Occasional

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Especially when there are difficulties in our relations, parties and statesmen in China and Japan should look over the situation from a higher point of view and preserve the political foundation of bilateral ties.

Wu Bangguo

Party, Japan, Views

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The statesman shears the sheep; the politician skins them.

Austin O'Malley

Funny, Sheep, Political

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A virtuoso performance. Scott Thompson’s biography of the soldier statesman Fidel V. Ramos illustrates the fascinating and complex geography of Filipino politics and its relation with the American hegemon. It’s first-rate scholarship and equally first-rate writing.

F. Sionil José

Writing, Soldier, Biographies

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Statesman, yet friend to truth! of soul sincere, In action faithful, and in honour clear; Who broke no promise, serv'd no private end, Who gain'd no title, and who lost no friend.

Alexander Pope

Friendship, Faithful, Soul

'Epistles to Several Persons' 'To Mr. Addison' (1720) l. 67

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We are with Europe, but not of it. We are linked, but not comprised. We are interested and associated, but not absorbed. And should European statesmen address us in the words which were used of old — “Shall I speak for thee to the King or the Captain of the host?” — we should reply with the Shunamite woman: “Nay, Sir, for we dwell among our own people.”

Winston Churchill

Kings, Europe, People

"Winston S. Churchill: Companion Vol. V, Part Three, the Coming of War 1936-1939".

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