International Politics Quotes

#1. There is no such thing as gratitude in international politics.

Arnold J. Toynbee

#2. Alliance - in international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.

Ambrose Bierce

#3. You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics looks so petty.

Edgar Mitchell

#4. In the anarchic world of international politics, it is better to be Godzilla than Bambi.

John Mearsheimer

#5. Yeah, we should all line up along the Bosphorus Bridge and puff as hard as we can to shove this city in the direction of the West. If that doesn't work, we'll try the other way, see if we can veer to the East. It's no good to be in between. International politics does not appreciate ambiguity.

Elif Shafak

#6. International politics is never about democracy and human rights. It's about the interests of states. Remember that, no matter what you are told in history lessons.

Egon Bahr

#7. Like all forms of collective security, multilateral sanctions require a unanimity rarely achieved in international politics.

Elliott Abrams

#8. There is a pressing need to integrate the study of international economics with the study of international politics to deepen our comprehension of the forces at work in the world.

Robert Gilpin

#9. Japan should get more involved in mediating disputes between countries and seek to play the role of a peace broker. To make this possible, we must train people so they have a solid understanding of international politics and great negotiation skills.

Sadako Ogata

#10. Globalization has rendered the world increasingly interdependent, but international politics is still based on the sovereignty of states.

George Soros

#11. The sad fact is that international politics has always been a ruthless and dangerous business, and it is likely to remain that way.

John Mearsheimer

#12. My mom is like this hard-core, liberal feminist. She's a professor in Boston, and she's been teaching women's studies for 30 years and international politics.

Eliza Dushku

#13. International politics is no longer a zero-sum game but a multi-dimensional arena where cooperation and competition often occur simultaneously. Gone is the age of blood feuds. World leaders are expected to lead in turning threats into opportunities.

Hassan Rouhani

#14. From out there on the moon, international politics looks so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck, drag him a quarter of a million miles out, and say, 'Look at that, you son of a bitch.

Ed Mitchell

#15. As Americans we like to believe that we're loved in international politics or that people like what we're doing. But we also recognize that we have an extraordinary responsibility to do what we think is right, and that sometimes what we do is not very popular.

Condoleezza Rice

#16. A new chapter in the history of international politics has begun, one in which the pursuit and control of energy resources would be the central dynamic of world affairs, and governments.

Michael Klare

#17. International politics, like all politics, is a struggle for power

Hans J. Morgenthau

#18. International politics, by and large, are a depressing study.

C.V. Wedgwood

#19. Iago is the dominant trance state of our planet. It influences our relationships, our sexuality, our parenting, and our attempts to relax. It permeates corporate business, international politics, and our economic system.

Arjuna Ardagh

#20. Apocalypse is the lens through which we view international politics because it is the fons et origo of the concept of history and historiography. Were it not for apocalypse, we would not have the categories of mind with which to ask the questions of meaning and adequacy of interpretation. M

Robert Hamerton-Kelly

#21. I was supposed to be women's lib, and now I'd exceeded it and gone over into international politics.

Kate Millett

#22. War, we are told, shapes character; it resolves the major questions of international politics, consolidates nations, and indeed, constitutes the principal factor in the progress of civilization through its successive stages.

Elie Ducommun

#23. Our country, if that is what we want, can now permanently radiate love, understanding, the power of the spirit and of ideas. It is precisely this glow that we can offer as our specific contribution to international politics.

Vaclav Havel

#24. It is remarkable how weak international political responses have been. The failure of global summits on the environment make it plain that our politics are subject to technology and finance.

Pope Francis

#25. I never much cared for politics. I love policy, and I love international policy in particular. I got to be Secretary of State; it really doesn't get much better than that. I love what I do. I love being a professor.

Condoleezza Rice

#26. By the end of the third decade of this century, all of American life - politics, international relations, our homes, our jobs, our industries, the kind of cars we drive - will be forever transformed by the climate and energy challenge.

Joseph J. Romm

#27. We have passed some of the dirtiest chapters of mankind. Perhaps we are heading towards further inhuman treatments in many places such as Syria and Palestine.

Nilantha Ilangamuwa

#28. Do we want an Attorney General who will play politics with the law, play politics with the court and just play politics with international conventions designed to protect our troops? I do not want to play that kind of politics. I am going to vote against Alberto Gonzales.

Barbara Mikulski

#29. Tact and diplomacy are fine in international relations, in politics, perhaps even in business; in science only one thing matters, and that is the facts.

Hans Eysenck

#30. Nice mix of Tory MPs saying this issue shouldn't be used for petty political pointscoring, & Tory MPs trying to score petty political points.

Andy Zaltzman

#31. Too often in the post-9/11 world, when the time has come to translate the moral, and essentially progressive, roots of foreign policy idealism into plans for American action, liberals have said, 'Duck.

Richard Just

#32. The agony of international relations is the need to try to practice politics without the basic conditions for political order.

Bernard Crick

#33. At a purely practical level, history is important because it provides the basic skills needed for students to go further in sociology, politics, international relations and economics. History is also an ideal discipline for almost all careers in the law, the civil service and the private sector.

Antony Beevor

#34. The most fundamental problem is not that we don't have a system to run but those with knowledge are cynically manipulating the system for petty personal desires.

Nilantha Ilangamuwa

#35. It is a national tragedy of incalculable proportions....What is wrong with the United States that it can provide the environment for such an act? There is sickness in the nation when political differences cannot be accepted and settled in the democratic way.
(from The St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

United Press International

#36. 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

#37. [Internationa] Aid is just another praetorian business enterprise.

Arundhati Roy

#38. In every era, humanity produces demonic individuals and seductive ideas of repression. The task of statesmanship is to prevent their rise to power and sustain an international order capable of deterring them if they do achieve it.

Henry Kissinger

#39. How can you cry for others' struggles when you are facilitating mayhem in your own land?

Nilantha Ilangamuwa

#40. A great deal of world politics is a fundamental struggle, but it is also a struggle that has to be waged intelligently.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

#41. In the long run, even a tyrannical government only has the power that the people confer on it and coming to understand history is the beginning of making things right.

Nilantha Ilangamuwa

#42. 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

#43. While Pakistan plunged into civil war, Kissinger looked for massacres committed by Bengalis, to generate a moral equivalence that would exonerate Yahya. It would be convenient for Nixon and Kissinger to be able to say that both sides were equally rotten.

Gary J. Bass

#44. It's when the 'international community' expresses 'concern' about your 'situation' that your situation is well and truly fucked.

Michael D. Weiss

#45. They said "globalization"!!; my reply then was and still is that the only way for "globalization" to cherish and succeed is through a "lifestyle" and not through a "culture" driven societies; and gentlemen, that is not what the world can afford !!

Hisham Fawzi

#46. International awareness of his deceptive practices is the reflection of the frustration that is prevailing in Sri Lanka which the President is trying to undermine by the traditional emotive and hate mongering politics.

Nilantha Ilangamuwa

#47. So the major obstacle to the development of new supplies is not geology but what happens above ground: international affairs, politics, investment and technology.

Daniel Yergin

#48. Every aspect of the world today - even politics and international relations - is affected by chemistry.

Linus Pauling

#49. In almost every country there are elements of opinion which would welcome such a conclusion because they wish to return to the politics of the balance of power, unrestricted and unregulated armaments, international anarchy, and preparation for war.

Arthur Henderson

#50. Modern war, modern international hostility is, I believe, possible only through the stupid illiteracy of the mass of men and the conceit and intellectual indolence of rulers and those who feed the public mind.

H.G.Wells

#51. Art has often been and continues to be considered transcendent. I see this as misguided and, in fact, a way of subverting the powerful voice art can be in global discussions about politics, economics, society, culture, religion and international relations.

Aman Mojadidi

#52. When you live in America, it's kind of insular - the news coverage that you get - unless you're really smart about it and find more international news coverage. I've learned that from my husband. In the French culture, they talk politics.

Kim Raver

#53. On free commerce, open communication, shared knowledge, secular politics, religious coexistence, international law, and diplomatic immunity.

Jack Weatherford

#54. Einstein also knew the dangers of taking this step. That he understood the physics of nuclear weapons was beyond question, but he could claim no equivalent understanding of international affairs. As he later famously remarked, "politics is more difficult than physics."1

Michael Keren

#55. In a rich moonlit garden, flowers open beneath the eyes of entire nations terrified to acknowledge the simplicity of the beauty of peace.

Aberjhani

#56. My message to the international community is that our silence and complicity especially on the situation in Gaza shames us all. It is almost like the behaviour of the military junta in Burma

Desmond Tutu

#57. I'm used to politics at an international level: people put together an argument and, even if you vehemently disagree with them, well, you can recognise it's an argument and respond.

Mohamed ElBaradei

#58. The ignoring of differences is the most fatal mistake in politics or industry or international life: every difference that is swept up into a bigger conception feeds and enriches society; every difference which is ignored feeds on society and eventually corrupts it.

Mary Parker Follett

#59. It is never right for any individual or government to do any vast evil as a means to some hypothetical good.

Leonard Woolf

#60. The major international appeal for 'House of Cards' was kind of a surprise because it's a very American show. What we learned is that American politics is very American, but greed and corruption and all of that is very global.

Ted Sarandos

#61. The artificial separation of politics and culture is nowhere more pronounced than in the discourse of foreign policy and international affairs.

Ellen Willis

#62. We do not have to dig deep into history to understand the reality. The examples of Saddam Hussain, who was executed after a sham trial and the case of Muammar Gaddafi, who killed after surrendering in broad daylight, have given enough factual reality to understand the painful truth.

Nilantha Ilangamuwa

#63. Sure we could replace war with paintball battles. But it would escalate to paint grenades, paint bombs, weapons of mass paint. I don't want to live in a world where my kids have to worry about what color they will be in the morning.

Dan Florence

#64. In the case of climate change, the threat is long-term and diffuse and requires broad international action for the benefit of people decades in the future. And in politics, the urgent always trumps the important, and that is what makes it a very difficult and challenging issue.

Martin Rees