Statesmanship Quotes - Page 3

• ...to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Peace, War, Corporations

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• Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European Ambition, Rivalship, Interest, Humour or Caprice?

  George Washington

  Ambition, Destiny, Europe

  George Washington’s "Farewell Address", oll.libertyfund.org. September 19, 1796.

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• Stern men with empires in their brains.

  James Russell Lowell

  Men, Brain, Mind

  James Russell Lowell (1871). “The poetical works of James Russell Lowell”, p.272

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• And statesmen at her council met Who knew the seasons, when to take Occasion by the hand, and make The bounds of freedom wider yet.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Freedom, Hands, Mets

  Alfred Tennyson Tennyson, Baron, Alfred Lord Tennyson (2014). “Fifty Poems”, p.2, Cambridge University Press

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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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• The frenzy of nations is the statesmanship of fate.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Fate, Zeal, Frenzy

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• Statesmen have to bend to the collective will of their peoples or be broken.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Broken, Collectives, Statesmen

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• If, in 2008, I could have not been in equities, I wouldn't have been in equities. If I could have not bet on the Seahawks in the Super Bowl, I wouldn't have bet on the Seahawks. Life and statesmanship are not lived with the benefit of hindsight.

  Bret Stephens

  Benefits, Super Bowl, Hindsight

  Source: www.wsj.com

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• The chief element in the art of statesmanship under modern conditions is the ability to elucidate the confused and clamorous interests which converge upon the seat of government. It is an ability to penetrate from the na?ve self-interest of each group to its permanent and real interest. Statesmanship consists in giving the people not what they want but what they will learn to want.

  Walter Lippmann

  Art, Real, Confused

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• The last degree of honesty has always been, and is still considered incompatible with statesmanship. To hunger and thirst after righteousness has been naturally, as it were, supposed a disqualification for affairs.

  Harriet Martineau

  Honesty, Hunger And Thirst, Politics

  Harriet Martineau (1837). “Society in America”, p.57

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• Statistical science is indispensable to modern statesmanship. In legislation as in physical science it is beginning to be understood that we can control terrestrial forces only by obeying their laws. The legislator must formulate in his statutes not only the national will, but also those great laws of social life revealed by statistics.

  James A. Garfield

  Science, Government, Law

  Garfield, James A. (1882). “The works of James Abram Garfield. Volume 1”, p.455, Best Books on

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• The idea that the object of constitutions is not to confirm the predominance of any interest, but to prevent it; to preserve with equal care the independence of labour and the security of property; to make the rich safe against envy, and the poor against oppression, marks the highest level attained by the statesmanship of Greece.

  Lord Acton

  Ideas, Envy, Independence

  John Emerich Edward Dalberg, Lord Acton (2016). “The History of Freedom (and other Essays)”, p.35, Jazzybee Verlag

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• There's a point, you know, where treachery is so complete and unashamed that it becomes statesmanship.

  George MacDonald Fraser

  Treachery, Knows

  George MacDonald Fraser (2013). “Flashman and the Mountain of Light”, p.195, Penguin

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• The facts of nature cannot in the long run be violated. Penetrating and seeping through everything like water, they will undermine any system that fails to take account of them, and sooner or later they will bring about its downfall. But an authority wise enough in its statesmanship to give sufficient free play to nature - of which spirit is a part - need fear no premature decline.

  Carl Jung

  Wise, Running, Play

  Carl Gustav Jung, Herbert Read, R. F.C. Hull (1954). “The practice of psychotherapy”, Bollingen

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• President George Bush had the courage and the vision and we will always be grateful to President George Bush for that tremendous leadership and statesmanship.

  Wesley Clark

  Grateful, Vision, President

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• There are those who view the abolitionists as just maniacs, apolitical fanatics who helped to cause the war, and Lincoln is the model of responsible statesmanship. I think that is a misconception, the idea that Lincoln knows what's possible and the abolitionists don't.

  Eric Foner

  War, Thinking, Ideas

  "Eric Foner on the Perennial Relevance of Abraham Lincoln". Interview with Aaron Leonard, historynewsnetwork.org. October 4, 2010.

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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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• Piano playing is more difficult than statesmanship. It is harder to awake emotions in ivory keys than it is in human beings.

  Ignacy Jan Paderewski

  Inspirational, Keys, Ivory

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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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• When everybody has got money they cut taxes, and when they're broke they raise them. That's statesmanship of the highest order.

  Will Rogers

  Money, Cutting, Order

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• Men who think in lifetimes are of little use to statesmanship.

  H. G. Wells

  Men, Thinking, Use

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• It is wise statesmanship which suggests that in time of peace we must prepare for war, and it is no less a wise benevolence that makes preparation in the hour of peace for assuaging the ills that are sure to accompany war.

  Clara Barton

  Wise, War, Preparation

  Clara Barton (1899). “The Red Cross in peace and war”

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• Most men appear to think that the art of despotic government is statesmanship, and what men affirm to be unjust and inexpedient in their own case they are not ashamed of practicing towards others; they demand just rule for themselves, but where other men are concerned they care nothing about it. Such behavior is irrational; unless the one party is, and the other is not, born to serve, in which case men have a right to command, not indeed all their fellows, but only those who are intended to be subjects; just as we ought not to hunt mankind, whether for food or sacrifice . .

  Aristotle

  Art, Sacrifice, Men

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• Statesmanship is developed in the hard knocks of general experience, private and public.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Hard

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• True statesmanship is the art of changing a nation from what it is into what it ought to be.

  William Rounseville Alger

  Leadership, Art, Ought

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