A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.
Robert Frost
A real diplomat is one who can cut his neighbor's throat without having his neighbor notice it.
Trygve Lie
When a diplomat says yes he means perhaps; when he says perhaps he means no; when he says no he is no diplomat.
Unknown
Be polite; write diplomatically; even in a declaration of war one observes the rules of politeness.
Otto von Bismarck
Diplomacy is a disguised war, in which states seek to gain by barter and intrigue, by the cleverness of arts, the objectives which they would have to gain more clumsily by means of war.
Randolph Bourne
The principle of give and take is the principle of diplomacy - give one and take ten
Mark Twain
To say nothing, especially when speaking, is half the art of diplomacy.
Will Durant
There are few ironclad rules of diplomacy but to one there is no exception. When an official reports that talks were useful, it can safely be concluded that nothing was accomplished.
John Kenneth Galbraith
I must acknowledge, once and for all, that the purpose of diplomacy is to prolong a crisis.
Star Trek
Diplomats are just as essential to starting a war as soldiers are for finishing it... You take diplomacy out of war, and the thing would fall flat in a week.
Will Rogers
MINISTER, n. An agent of a higher power with a lower responsibility. In diplomacy, an officer sent into a foreign country as the visible embodiment of his sovereign's hostility.
Ambrose Bierce