International Relations Quotes

“When diplomacy ends, War begins.”
― Adolf Hitler

“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion […] but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.”
― Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order

“If it's wrong when they do it, it's wrong when we do it.”
― Noam Chomsky

“Bond reflected that good Americans were fine people and that most of them seemed to come from Texas.”
― Ian Fleming, Casino Royale

“In a rich moonlit garden, flowers open beneath the eyes of entire nations terrified to acknowledge the simplicity of the beauty of peace.”
― Aberjhani, Elemental: The Power of Illuminated Love

“Palestinian and Israeli leaders finally recover the Road Map to Peace, only to discover that, while they were looking for it, the Lug Nuts of Mutual Interest came off the Front Left Wheel of Accommodation, causing the Sport Utility Vehicle of Progress to crash into the Ditch of Despair.”
― Dave Barry, Dave Barry's History of the Millennium

“In the emerging world of ethnic conflict and civilizational clash, Western belief in the universality of Western culture suffers three problems: it is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous.”
― Samuel P Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order

“International politics, like all politics, is a struggle for power”
― Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations

“...foreign policy is a matter of costs and benefits, not theology.”
― Fareed Zakaria, The Post-American World

“Americans may say they love our accents (I have been accused of sounding 'like Princess Di') but the more thoughtful ones resent and rather dislike us as a nation and people, as friends of mine have found out by being on the edge of conversations where Americans assumed no Englishmen were listening.

And it is the English, specifically, who are the targets of this. Few Americans have heard of Wales. All of them have heard of Ireland and many of them think they are Irish. Scotland gets a sort of free pass, especially since Braveheart re-established the Scots' anti-English credentials among the ignorant millions who get their history off the TV.”
― Peter Hitchens

“War made the state, and the state made war”
― Charles Tilly

“As soon as a Western man comes into contact with the East -- he's already confused. The West has sort of an international rape mentality towards the East. ...Basically, 'Her mouth says no, but her eyes say yes.' The West thinks of itself as masculine -- big guns, big industry, big money -- so the East is feminine -- weak, delicate, poor...but good at art, and full of inscrutable wisdom -- the feminine mystique. Her mouth says no, but her eyes say yes. The West believes the East, deep down, wants to be dominated -- because a woman can't think for herself. ...You expect Oriental countries to submit to your guns, and you expect Oriental women to be submissive to your men.”
― David Henry Hwang, M. Butterfly

“The Nation, which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. ... The Nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the Government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The Government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times, it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of Nations has been the victim.”
― George Washington, George Washington's Farewell Address

“I always wondered if the good people who send us bibles really think that hookworm and hunger are healed by scripture? Our patients are illiterate.”
― Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone

“It is the duty of the United Nations, is to make every international border a garden, a place of art and cultural festival.”
― Amit Ray, Nuclear Weapons Free World - Peace on the Earth

“A great deal of world politics is a fundamental struggle, but it is also a struggle that has to be waged intelligently.”
― Zbigniew Brzezinski

“If blue helmeted UN peacekeepers show up in your town or village and offer to protect you, run.”
― Andrew Thomson, Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures) : True Stories from a War Zone

“United Nations should be like a caring mother having many children. Its role is to grow trust and respect among the siblings with strong emotional bonds.”
― Amit Ray, Nuclear Weapons Free World - Peace on the Earth

“Among all the methods, non-violence is most successful, and I strongly believe that only non-violence can set the true mood of peace and harmony among the nuclear nations. Our experiments with non-violence should be more wide, more engaging and more humble.”
― Amit Ray, Nuclear Weapons Free World - Peace on the Earth

“Far too many people—many of them academics, many politicians—continue to jabber about a supposed 'special relationship' between our two countries.

I used to think that no such thing existed. Recently, I have become convinced that it does, and that it is in fact a Specially Bad Relationship.”
― Peter Hitchens

“We have to examine the extent to which we export poverty to other societies. When we decide that we will import products from China that are produced by people earning less than a dollar an hour, and grant their country most-favored-nation status (political contributions notwithstanding), we are deciding to make American workers who must earn the minimum wage compete with them. I am not suggesting that we close the doors to China or to Mexico, but I am suggesting that we look very carefully at the web of international relationships that we are creating. At the very minimum, we should understand that we have two choices in our country: we can raise world living standards by exporting those standards, or we can lower living standards- not only the world’s but also our own- by deciding that it is acceptable for the products of exploited labor to enter this country.”
― Julianne Malveaux

“Bringing countries together above their conflicts require great minds and great hearts.”
― Amit Ray, Nuclear Weapons Free World - Peace on the Earth

“International peace negotiations need more value creation than value claiming. The more we create value for peace and development, the easier it is going to be to claim value for a nuclear weapons free world.”
― Amit Ray, Nuclear Weapons Free World - Peace on the Earth

“The key to resolving international conflict with a positive outcome includes looking for a win-win situation, finding common ground, formulating proactive strategies, using effective negotiation and communication, and appreciating cultural differences.”
― Amit Ray, Nuclear Weapons Free World - Peace on the Earth

“Finally, and even more seriously, I fear a return to the international climate that prevailed in the 1920s and '30s, when the United States withdrew from the global stage and countries everywhere pursued what they perceived to be their own interests without regard to larger and more enduring goals. When arguing that every age has its own Fascism, the Italian writer and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi added that the critical point can be reached “not just through the terror of police intimidation, but by denying and distorting information, by undermining systems of justice, by paralyzing the education system, and by spreading in a myriad subtle ways nostalgia for a world where order reigned.” If he is right (and I think he is), we have reason to be concerned by the gathering array of political and social currents buffeting us today—currents propelled by the dark underside of the technological revolution, the corroding effects of power, the American president’s disrespect for truth, and the widening acceptance of dehumanizing insults, Islamophobia, and anti-Semitism as being within the bounds of normal public debate. We are not there yet, but these feel like signposts on the road back to an era when Fascism found nourishment and individual tragedies were multiplied millions-fold.”
― Madeleine K. Albright, Fascism: A Warning

“How come we can invent better ways to kill each other, but not one to preserve peace!”
― Abhijit Naskar

“The possibility of somebody emerging as a nuclear power or events happening that surprise us on the nuclear age is still a possibility. It always will be because there's an awful lot going on behind the scenes. Our intelligence just has to get better on that score. Peter Goss”
― Joel C. Rosenberg, Inside the Revolution: How the Followers of Jihad, Jefferson, and Jesus Are Battling to Dominate the Middle East and Transform the World

“Vladimir Putin pledges no allegiance to to the democratic articles of faith, but he does not explicitly renounce democracy. He disdains Western values while professing to identify with the West. He doesn’t care what the State Department puts in next year’s human rights report, because he has yet to pay a political price in his own country for the sins reported in prior years. He tells bald lies with a straight face, and when guilty of aggression, blames the victim. He has convinced many, apparently including the American president, that he is a master strategist, a man of strength and will. Confined to Russia, these facts would be sobering, but Putin, like Mussolini nine decades ago, is watched carefully in other regions by leaders who are tempted to follow in his footsteps. Some already are.”
― Madeleine K. Albright, Fascism: A Warning

“But we are only termites on a planet and maybe when we bore too deeply into the planet there'll be a reckoning. Who knows?”
― Harry S. Truman

“More broadly, it is vital for leaders to work across international boundaries to minimize the number of people who feel the need to leave their home countries in the first place. That requires building healthy democracies, fostering peace, and generating prosperity from the ground up. However, success in that endeavor demands a way of looking at the world that recognizes the humanity we share with one another, and the interests that nations have in common. Those who are content to look inward, and who see no higher purpose than to shield themselves from the different, the new, and the unknown, will be of no help.”
― Madeleine K. Albright, Fascism: A Warning