Statesmen Quotes - Page 5

• And the annual meetings of the League's Assembly are in effect official peace congresses binding on the participating states to an extent that most statesmen a quarter of a century ago would have regarded as utopian.

  Hjalmar Branting

  League, Assembly, Century

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• A statesman... must wait until he hears the steps of God sounding through events, then leap up and grasp the hem of His garment.

  Otto von Bismarck

  Waiting, Political, Events

  "Bismarck: The Man and the Statesman". Book by A. J. P. Taylor, (p.115), 1955.

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• My father was a statesman, I'm a political woman. My father was a saint. I'm not.

  Indira Gandhi

  Father, Political, Saint

  "Indira's Coup". The New York Review of Books, September 18, 1975.

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• Conservative, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Evil, Political, Wish

  Cynic's Word Book (1906) p. 56

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• The South produced statesmen and soldiers, planters and doctors, lawyers and poets, but certainly not engineers or mechanics. Let the Yankees adopt such low callings.

  Margaret Mitchell

  Yankees, Doctors, Soldier

  "Gone with the Wind".

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• The true statesman is the one who is willing to take risks.

  Charles de Gaulle

  Risk, Willing, Statesmanship

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• Letter writing was clearly important to Reagan. Even as president he kept dashing off letters to friends, pen pals, media people, statesmen, critics, and the kind of people who write to presidents never expecting a reply.

  Russell Baker

  Writing, Media, People

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• A statesman, we are told, should follow public opinion. Doubtless, as a coachman follows his horses; having firm hold on the reins and guiding them.

  Augustus Hare

  Horse, Public Opinion, Holding On

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• One or two of these scoundrel statesmen should be shot once a-year, just to keep the others on their good behavior.

  Walter Scott

  Years, Two, Behavior

  Walter Scott (1871). “Waverley Novels”

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• The true men of action in our time those who transform the world are not the politicians and statesmen but the scientists. Unfortunately poetry cannot celebrate them because their deeds are concerned with things, not persons, and are therefore speechless. When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.

  W. H. Auden

  Art, Mistake, Science

  Dyer's Hand (1963) "The Poet and the City"

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• The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal.

  Erich Fromm

  Successful, Political, Nerd

  Erich Fromm (2013). “Escape from Freedom”, p.262, Open Road Media

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• The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opposition than from his fervent supporters.

  Walter Lippmann

  Learning, Glowing, Politics

  Walter Lippmann, Clinton Rossiter, James Lare (1982). “The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy”, p.233, Harvard University Press

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• A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation.

  James Freeman Clarke

  Witty, Thinking, Political

  "A Politician’s Christmas Carol" by Tom Gerdy, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 5, 2012.

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• Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a loaf; is better than a whole loaf.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Mean, Half, Literature

  1910 What's Wrong with the World, ch.3.

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• If there is not the war, you don't get the great general; if there is not a great occasion, you don't get a great statesman; if Lincoln had lived in a time of peace, no one would have known his name.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Peace, War, Names

  Theodore Roosevelt (2012). “African and European Addresses”, p.129, tredition

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• A politician is a man who understands government, and it takes a politician to run a government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead 10 or 15 years.

  Harry S. Truman

  Patriotic, Men, Years

  "The Wit & Wisdom of Harry Truman: A Treasury of Quotations, Anecdotes, and Observations".

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• Re-examining our reasoning is not something that has come naturally to American statesmen.

  Samantha Power

  Examining, Reasoning

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• The prosperity of commerce is now perceived and acknowledged by all enlightened statesmen to be the most useful as well as the most productive source of national wealth, and has accordingly become a primary object of their political cares.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Political, Care, Wealth

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (1837). “The Federalist, on the New Constitution”, p.55

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• I regard it (the Constitution) as the work of the purest patriots and wisest statesman that ever existed, aided by the smiles of a benign Providence; it almost appears a "Divine interposition in our behalf... the hand that destroys our Constitution rends our Union asunder forever.

  Daniel Webster

  Hands, Forever, Unions

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• There in the city's steam-and-smoke-smudged harbor is the most extraordinary sight of all: a great copper-clad lady with a torch in one hand and a book in the other. It is not a statesman or a god or a war hero who welcomes us to this new world. It is but an ordinary woman lighting the way- a lady offering us the liberty to pursue our dreams if we've the courage to begin.

  Libba Bray

  Dream, War, Book

  Libba Bray (2009). “The Sweet Far Thing”, p.535, Simon and Schuster

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• If we mean to have Heroes, Statesmen and Philosophers, we should have learned women. The world perhaps would laugh at me, and accuse me of vanity, but you I know have a mind too enlarged and liberal to disregard the Sentiment. If much depends as is allowed upon the early Education of youth and the first principals which are instill'd take the deepest root, great benefit must arise from literary accomplishments in women.

  Abigail Adams

  Hero, Mean, Vanity

  Abigail Adams, John Adams, L. H. Butterfield, Marc Friedlaender, Mary-Jo Kline (1975). “The Book of Abigail and John: Selected Letters of the Adams Family, 1762-1784”, p.153, UPNE

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• A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities.

  Walter Bagehot

  Men, Politics, Opinion

  'Biographical Studies' (1881) 'The Character of Sir Robert Peel'

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• To them belong, not only the truly great statesmen, but all other great reformers as well. Beside Frederick the Great stands Martin Luther as well as Richard Wagner.

  Adolf Hitler

  Religious, Mein Kampf, Luther

  Adolf Hitler (1998). “Mein Kampf”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• We all have known good critics, who have stamped out poet's hopes; Good statesmen, who pulled ruin on the state; Good patriots, who, for a theory, risked a cause; Good kings, who disemboweled for a tax; Good Popes, who brought all good to jeopardy; Good Christians, who sat still in easy-chairs; And damned the general world for standing up. Now, may the good God pardon all good men!

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Christian, Kings, Men

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• The statesman's duty is to bridge the gap between his nation's experience and his vision.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Bridges, Vision, Gaps

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