Statesmen Quotes - Page 6

• Ever since John Kennedy, Democrats have had a weakness for dashing younger men like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and, I suppose, Jimmy Carter. They balance their tickets with senior statesmen - Lyndon Johnson, Joe Biden, Walter Mondale. (Al Gore was young but played ancient).

  Joe Klein

  Senior, Men, Balance

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• Politicians all too often think about the next election. Statesmen think about the next generation.

  Linda Lingle

  Thinking, Generations, Next

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• Why is war such an easy option? Why does peace remain such an elusive goal? We know statesmen skilled at waging war, but where are those dedicated enough to humanity to find a way to avoid war

  Elie Wiesel

  War, Goal, Humanity

  Elie Wiesel (2011). “From the Kingdom of Memory: Reminiscences”, p.166, Schocken

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• It is commonly supposed that the uniformity of a studious life affords no matter for narration: but the truth is, that of the most studious life a great part passes without study. An author partakes of the common condition of humanity; he is born and married like another man; he has hopes and fears, expectations and disappointments, griefs and joys, and friends and enemies, like a courtier or a statesman; nor can I conceive why his affairs shuld not excite curiosity as much as the whisper of a drawing-room, or the factions of a camp.

  Samuel Johnson

  Disappointment, Grief, Drawing

  Samuel Johnson (1836). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.: D., with an Essay on His Life and Genius”, p.453

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• In the higher walks of politics the same sort of thing occurs. The statesman who has gradually concentrated all power within himself ... may have had anything but a public motive... The phrases which are customary on the platform and in the Party Press have gradually come to him to seem to express truths, and he mistakes the rhetoric of partisanship for a genuine analysis of motives... He retires from the world after the world has retired from him.

  Bertrand Russell

  Truth, Mistake, Party

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• Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier. In the divided or social state these functions are parcelled out to individuals, each of whom aims to do his stint of the joint work, whilst each other performs his.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Soldier, Joints

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Ernest Spiller, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Joseph Slater, Jean Ferguson Carr (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Nature, addresses, and lectures”, p.53, Harvard University Press

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• Today (1950), the hatred of the Moslem countries against the West is becoming hatred against Christianity itself. Although the statesmen have not yet taken it into account, there is still grave danger that the temporal power of Islam may return and, with it, the menace that it may shake off a West which has ceased to be Christian, and affirm itself as a great anti-Christian world Power.

  Fulton J. Sheen

  Christian, Country, Taken

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• Without an acquaintance with chemistry, the statesman must remain a stranger to the true vital interests of the state, to the means of its organic development and improvement; ... The highest economic or material interests of a country, the increased and more profitable production of food for man and animals, ... are most closely linked with the advancement and diffusion of the natural sciences, especially of chemistry.

  Justus von Liebig

  Country, Knowledge, Mean

  Justus von Liebig (1859). “Familiar Letters on Chemistry, in its relation to Physiology, Dietetics, Agriculture, Commerce and Political Economy: Edited by John Blyth”, p.21

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• On the Left, on the Right, in the Middle; Authors, statesmen, thieves; so-called humanists and self-declared fascists; the adventurous and the contemplative, in every realm of male expression and action, violence is experienced and articulated as love and freedom.

  Andrea Dworkin

  Self, Expression, Feminist

  Andrea Dworkin (1989). “Pornography: men possessing women”, Plume

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• These stupid peasants, who, throughout the world, hold potentates on their thrones, make statesmen illustrious, provide generals with lasting victories, all with ignorance, indifference, or half-witted hatred, moving the world with the strength of their arms, and getting their heads knocked together in the name of God, the king, or the stock exchange-immortal, dreaming, hopeless asses, who surrender their reason to the care of a shining puppet, and persuade some toy to carry their lives in his purse.

  Stephen Crane

  Dream, Kings, War

  Stephen Crane (1970). “The Works of Stephen Crane Vol. 5: Tales of Adventure”, University of Virginia Press

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• At home, you always have to be a politician; when you're abroad, you almost feel yourself a statesman.

  Harold MacMillan

  Home, Politics, Politician

  1958 Speech during the first visit of a British Prime Minister to Australia,17 Feb.

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• At present the peace of the world has been preserved, not by statesmen, but by capitalists.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Peace, World, Capitalist

  Benjamin Disraeli (2009). “Benjamin Disraeli Letters: 1860-1864”

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• The mountain of history books under which we all stand leans so heavily in the other direction-so tremblingly respectful of states and statesmen and so disrespectful, by inattention, to people's movements-that we need some counterforce to avoid being crushed into submission.

  Howard Zinn

  Book, People, Mountain

  Howard Zinn (2014). “A People's History of the United States”, p.560, Pan Macmillan

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• A statesman who shakes the fruit trees of his neighbors - to dislodge the worms.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Tree, Fruit, Culture

  Ambrose Bierce (2001). “The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary”, p.13, University of Georgia Press

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• No man has come so near our definition of a constitutional statesman - the powers of a first-rate man and the creed of a second-rate man.

  Walter Bagehot

  Men, Definitions, Firsts

  1881 Biographical Studies,'The Character of Sir Robert Peel'.

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• [O]ur statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking.

  Isaac Asimov

  Thinking, Inevitable Change, Way

  1978 'My Own View', in R Holdstock (ed) Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1978).

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• Statesman create; ordinary leaders consume. The ordinary leader is satisfied with ameliorating the environment, not transforming it; a statesman must be a visionary and an educator.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Leader, Politics, Ordinary

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• Great statesmen seem to direct and rule by a sort of power to put themselves in the place of the nation over which they are set, and may thus be said to possess the souls of poets at the same time they display the coarser sense and the more vulgar sagacity of practical men of business.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Men, Soul, Vision

  Woodrow Wilson, Howard Seavoy Leach (1970). “The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson: Authorized Ed”

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• Your real statesman is first of all, and chief of all, a great human being, with an eye for all the great fields on which men likehimself struggle, with unflagging, pathetic hope, toward better things.... He is a guide, a counselor, a mentor, a servant, a friend of mankind.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Leadership, Real, Struggle

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• That is Gladstone, the greatest statesman that ever lived. I intend to be a statesman, too.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Ambition, Gladstone

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• The legislator must be in advance of his age.
  Across the mind of the statesman flash ever and anon the brilliant, though partial, intimations of future events.... Something which is more than fore-sight and less than prophetic knowledge marks the statesman a peculiar being among his contemporaries.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Sight, Mind, Age

  Woodrow Wilson, Arthur Stanley Link, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Princeton University (1994). “Papers”

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• Most British statesmen have either drunk too much or womanised too much. I never fell into the second category.

  George Brown, Baron George-Brown

  Drunk, Too Much, British

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• The worst mistake that a statesman can make is to promise victory and to see it dashed, the hopes dashed.

  Winston Churchill

  Mistake, Promise, Victory

  Source: www.nbcnews.com

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• A statesman's words, like butcher's meat, should be well weighed.

  Pearl Mary Teresa Craigie

  Meat, Politician, Should

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• He never sought to stem the current. [Of a statesman who accommodates his views to public opinion.]

  Juvenal

  Views, Public Opinion, Currents

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