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(A Foreign Secretary) is forever poised between the cliche and the indiscretion.
Harold Macmillan
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Interpretation

What this quote means

The role of a Foreign Secretary involves balancing between safe, clichéd statements and risky, potentially indiscreet ones.

Harold Macmillan's quote highlights the delicate position of a Foreign Secretary, emphasizing the challenge of navigating between the predictability of clichéd responses and the danger of making indiscreet remarks. This reflects the intricate balance required in diplomacy, where the choice of words can significantly impact international relations and negotiations.

Themes

Foreign SecretaryDiplomacyPoliticsCommunicationDiscretion

In practice

Example use cases

This quote could be used in a speech about the challenges of political communication.

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