Quotes on Statesmanship

We lost the American colonies because we lacked the statesmanship to know the right time and the manner of yielding what is impossible to keep.

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.

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

To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman.

War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, the lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade.

It is our policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.

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

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.

Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof; it is temporary expedient, often wise in party politics, almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship.

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.

A politician is a statesman who approaches every question with an open mouth.

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

You call that statesmanship. I call it an emotional spasm.

In statesmanship get formalities right, never mind about the moralities.

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

The essence of statesmanship is not a rigid adherence to the past, but a prudent and probing concern for the future.