Top 100 Statesman's Quotes
#1. It is not the principled partisan, however obnoxious he may seem to his opponents, who degrades our public debate, but the preening, self-styled statesman who elevates compromise to a first principle.
Tom DeLay
#2. At 82, Nelson (who wrote the song "On the Road Again," among a thousand or more others) is the elder statesman of country music, a steadying and powerful voice in the industry and on environmental issues, and he's still on the road much of the year. The music keeps calling.
Willie Nelson
#3. A candidate with no experience they would package as a citizen politician, a lifetime hack as an elder statesman.
Rick Perlstein
#4. Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.
[The New Statesman, February 25, 1933]
Cyril Connolly
#5. The Statesman who, knowing his instrument to be ready, and seeing War inevitable, hesitates to strike first is guilty of a crime against his country.
Carl Von Clausewitz
#6. A statesman wants courage and a statesman wants vision; but believe me, after six months' experience, he wants first, second, third and all the time - patience.
Stanley Baldwin
#7. The politician, Johnson's experience had taught him, could make promises without keeping them; words spoken in public had little relation to the practical conduct of daily life. But whatever justification a politician may claim for deceptions, the statesman must align his words with his action.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#8. That statesman is indeed happy who can count as his friends the really honest and consistent, the true Patriots, and the men of honorable thought.
Dorothea Dix
#9. National defense is one of the cardinal duties of a statesman.
John Adams
#10. A nation has honor precisely as it has fleas
on this or that body. The statesman who talks of honor
unless he means something else, quite different
is a rogue ...
Storm Jameson
#11. The statesman cannot govern without stability of belief, true or false.
George Bernard Shaw
#12. Jesper gave him a little shake. "Pull it together, kid." "Not a kid," Wylan mumbled, batting Jesper's hands away. "Fine, you're an elder statesman. Do you know how to shoot?" Wylan nodded slowly. "Skeet.
Leigh Bardugo
#13. When you're out of office, you can be a statesman.
John Connally
#14. No branch of the law is of more importance to the counsellor, the statesman, or the citizen, than a thorough acquaintance with the Constitution and laws of the Federal Government, as they are administered and as they affect the rights of the people.
Samuel Freeman Miller
#15. He never sought to stem the current. [Of a statesman who accommodates his views to public opinion.]
Juvenal
#16. I think it better that in times like these a poet's mouth be silent, for in truth we have no gift to set a statesman right.
William Butler Yeats
#17. Henry Kissinger is perhaps the best-known American statesman of the 20th century.
Saul David
#19. Belgium's declared intention to fight was, the Germans believed, no more than the "rage of dreaming sheep" - in the words a Prussian statesman once applied to his domestic opponents.
Barbara W. Tuchman
#20. A statesman, we are told, should follow public opinion. Doubtless, as a coachman follows his horses; having firm hold on the reins and guiding them.
Augustus Hare
#21. A great statesman thinks several times, and acts; a young lady acts, and thinks several times.
Thomas Hardy
#22. The statesman will soon find himself thwarted in some way or other, will deduce from this opposition a menace first to his plans, then to national prestige, and finally to the existence of the state itself - and so, regarding his country as the party attacked, will engage in a war of defence.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#23. History is replete with proofs, from Cato the Elder to Kennedy the Younger, that if you scratch a statesman you find an actor, but it is becoming harder and harder, in our time, to tell government from show business.
James Thurber
#24. War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, the lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
#25. The calculus of probabilities, when confined within just limits, ought to interest, in an equal degree, the mathematician, the experimentalist, and the statesman.
Francois Arago
#26. Education and morals make the good man, the good statesman, the good ruler.
Aristotle.
#27. That politician who curries favor with the citizens and indulges them and fawns upon them and has a presentiment of their wishes, and is skillful in gratifying them, he is esteemed a great statesman.
Plato
#28. Cobden was the greatest statesman and prophet of the century. His speeches are an inspiration. A man whose disciple I am willing to confess I am.
Richard Cobden
#29. It is widely known that whenever Senator Johnson feels the urge to act the statesman at the cost of a little political capital," WFB wrote in June 1958, "he lies down until he gets over it.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#30. You hit a certain age, and you haven't died yet, and you become an elder statesman. I think I get a lot of applause because I'm not keeling over.
Alan Arkin
#31. A statesman who shakes the fruit trees of his neighbors - to dislodge the worms.
Ambrose Bierce
#32. I mean, like a lot of kids growing up in the early seventies, I was fed Dr. Kissinger with my Fruit Loops. He was the Dr. Ruth of American foreign policy, and the model statesman.
Eugene Jarecki
#33. There's a false narrative that only the political class has the wisdom and the ability to be commander-in- chief. But if you go back and you study the design of our country, it was really designed for the citizen statesman.
Benjamin Carson
#34. If there is not the war, you don't get the great general; if there is not a great occasion, you don't get a great statesman; if Lincoln had lived in a time of peace, no one would have known his name.
Theodore Roosevelt
#35. The principle of laissez-faire may be safely trusted to in some things but in many more it is wholly inapplicable; and to appeal to it on all occasions savors more of the policy of a parrot than of a statesman or a philosopher.
John Ramsay McCulloch
#36. The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal.
Erich Fromm
#37. I wonder if you encountered this dictum first spoken by a twentieth-century statesman: An abyss cannot be crossed in two steps.
David Mitchell
#38. A ginooine statesman should be on his guard, if he must hev beliefs, not to b'lieve 'em too hard.
James Russell Lowell
#39. Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined.
Frederick Douglass
#40. Statesman, yet friend to truth! of soul sincere, In action faithful, and in honour clear; Who broke no promise, serv'd no private end, Who gain'd no title, and who lost no friend.
Alexander Pope
#41. Now he is a statesman, when what he really wants is to be what most reporters are, adult delinquents.
Peggy Noonan
#42. [Otto von Bismarck] only considered the interests of his own country - always the worst offense that a statesman can commit in the eyes of foreigners.
A.J.P. Taylor
#43. In testimony of their Respect For The Patriot of incorruptible Integrity, The Soldier of approved Valour The Statesman of consummate Wisdom; Whose Talents and Virtues will be admired By Grateful Posterity Long after this Marble shall have mouldered into Dust.
Alexander Hamilton
#44. A great statesman is he who knows when to depart from traditions, as well as when to adhere to them.
John Stuart Mill
#45. I very much wanted to be editor of the 'New Statesman!' But I never wanted to be prime minister, except maybe as a little boy.
Paul Johnson
#46. A statesman is a politician who places himself at the service of the nation. A politician is a statesman who places the nation at his service.
Georges Pompidou
#47. It is neither the statesman nor the friend who is asking your help and assistance, but simply the man.
Pierre Laval
#48. The very name of a politician, a statesman, is sure to cause terror and hatred; it has always connected with it the ideas of treachery, cruelty, fraud, and tyranny.
Edmund Burke
#49. The state is a fragile organization, and the statesman does not have the moral right to risk its survival on ethical restraint.
Henry Kissinger
#50. There's a certain clubbiness to the idea that you're an ex-president. You're no longer a politician. You're a statesman.
Robert Dallek
#51. A man who knows how to make good bargains or finds his money increase in his coffers, thinks presently that he has a good deal of brains and is almost fit to be a statesman.
Jean De La Bruyere
#52. The role of the scholar is to destroy chimeras, that of the statesman is to make use of them.
Gustave Le Bon
#53. The victors of the battles of tomorrow will be those who can best harness thought to action. From office boy to statesman, the prizes will be for those who most effectively exert their brains, who take deep, earnest and studious counsel of their minds, who stamp themselves as thinkers.
B.C. Forbes
#54. He has not yet become an elder statesman, though his foreign policy credentials are considerable, but he is certainly our ancient mariner, forever tugging at our sleeve to let him tell his tale of what really happened.
Ronald Steel
#56. Richelieu was a great statesman, and like all great statesman, he was a very ruthless man. He's not cruel. He just does what he has to do. And in his own mind, he's absolutely right.
Adrian Hodges
#57. Every human life has many aspects. The past of each one of us can be just as easily arranged into the biography of a beloved statesman as into that of a criminal.
Milan Kundera
#58. The fastest way for a politician to become an elder statesman is to lose an election.
Earl Wilson
#59. The mother is the one supreme asset of national life; she is more important by far than the successful statesman, or business man, or artist, or scientist.
Theodore Roosevelt
#61. ARENA, n. In politics, an imaginary rat-pit in which the statesman wrestles with his record.
Ambrose Bierce
#62. Terrorist organizations with specific political agendas may be encouraged and emboldened by Yasser Arafat's transformation from outlaw to statesman.
John F. Kerry
#63. British Statesman, parliamentary orator and political thinker, Edmund Burke once said, "Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it." This is true to say the least.
Robert Paulson
#64. A statesman ... must wait until he hears the steps of God sounding through events, then leap up and grasp the hem of His garment.
Otto Von Bismarck
#65. Every state in which anyone other than the statesman has to concern himself with politics is ill organized and deserves to perish by all these politicians. Another
Friedrich Nietzsche
#66. A virtuoso performance. Scott Thompson's biography of the soldier statesman Fidel V. Ramos illustrates the fascinating and complex geography of Filipino politics and its relation with the American hegemon. It's first-rate scholarship and equally first-rate writing.
F. Sionil Jose
#67. Nobody is qualified to become a statesman who is entirely ignorant of the problem of wheat.
Socrates
#68. It is true that a great statesman is he who knows when to depart from traditions, as well as when to adhere to them. But it is a great mistake to suppose that he will do this better for being ignorant of the traditions.
John Stuart Mill
#69. Your real statesman is first of all, and chief of all, a great human being, with an eye for all the great fields on which men likehimself struggle, with unflagging, pathetic hope, toward better things ... He is a guide, a counselor, a mentor, a servant, a friend of mankind.
Woodrow Wilson
#70. Whatever statesman or sage will effect reforms upon a gigantic or godlike scale must begin with the young.
Horace Mann
#71. A DEAD STATESMAN
I could not dig: I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?
from EPITAPHS OF THE WAR 1914-18
Rudyard Kipling
#72. No man has come so near our definition of a constitutional statesman - the powers of a first-rate man and the creed of a second-rate man.
Walter Bagehot
#73. He [Hitler] is a very great man. "Fuhrer" is the proper name for him, for he is a born leader, yes, and statesman.
David Lloyd George
#74. Government prohibitions do always more mischief than had been calculated; and it is not without much hesitation that a statesman should hazard to regulate the concerns of individuals, as if he could do it better than themselves.
Albert Gallatin
#75. The statesman's task is to hear God's footsteps marching through history, and to try and catch on to His coattails as He marches past.
Otto Von Bismarck
#76. Whether at home or abroad, the task of statesman is to work with human nature warts and all, and to draw on instincts and even prejudices that can be turned to good purpose. It is never to try to recreate Mankind in a new image.
Margaret Thatcher
#77. Men regarded ability in speaking as a peculiar gift, needed only by the lawyer, clergyman, or statesman. Today we have come to realize that it is the indispensable weapon of those who would forge ahead in the keen competition of business.
Susan Cain
#78. The statesman must think in terms of the national interest, conceived as power among other powers. The popular mind, unaware of the fine distinctions of the statesman's thinking, reasons more often than not in the simple moralistic and legalistic terms of absolute good and absolute evil.
Hans Morgenthau
#80. For I must not measure the speech of a statesman to his people by the impression which it leaves in a university professor, but by the effect it exerts on the people. And this alone gives the standard for the speaker's genius.
Adolf Hitler
#81. There is the sheer amount of Franklin's wisdom. And the talent. Franklin played four instruments. He was the nation's leading scientist and inventor, plus a leading author, statesman, and philanthropist. There has never been anyone like him.
Charlie Munger
#83. The statesman's duty is to bridge the gap between his nation's experience and his vision.
Henry A. Kissinger
#84. A politician is a person with whose politics you don't agree; if you agree with him he's a statesman.
David Lloyd George
#85. Self-reliance can turn a salesman into a merchant; a politician into a statesman; an attorney into a jurist; an unknown youth into a great leader. All are to be tomorrow's big leaders - those who in solitude sit above the clang and dust of time, with the world's secret trembling on their lips.
Newell Dwight Hillis
#86. The difference between being an elder statesman And posing successfully as an elder statesman Is practically negligible.
T. S. Eliot
#87. Nelson Mandela is, for me, the single statesman in the world. The single statesman, in that literal sense, who is not solving all his problems with guns. It's truly unbelievable.
Toni Morrison
#88. over the centuries Dante has been variously "constructed" - as lover, statesman, neo-Platonist, proto-Protestant, Romantic visionary, Byronic hero, Pre-Raphaelite, father of his country, theologian in verse, precursor of the modern novel, and, finally, altissimo poeta, the consummate poet.
Peter S. Hawkins
#89. MULTITUDE, n. A crowd; the source of political wisdom and virtue. In a republic, the object of the statesman's adoration.
Ambrose Bierce
#90. It is only natural that for any statesman at the helm of any government the question of his country's security should be a concern of the utmost importance.
Eisaku Sato
#91. A politician is a man who understands government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead for 15 years.
Harry S. Truman
#92. A statesman who confines himself to popular legislation - or, for the matter of that, a playwright who confines himself to popular plays - is like a blind man's dog who goes wherever the blind man pulls him, on the ground that both of them want to go to the same place.
George Bernard Shaw
#93. He's passed from rising hope to elder statesman without any intervening period whatsoever.
Michael Foot
#94. Time was when much of lawyering consisted (according to turn-of-the-century lawyer and statesman Elihu Root) in telling would-be clients that they are damned fool's, and should stop.
George F. Will
#95. I was working at the 'Evening Standard' when I heard that there was a job going as deputy literary editor on the 'New Statesman.' I remember thinking, 'That's perfect.' It was three days a week, and I had children, but I could make that work - so I applied for it and got it.
Claire Tomalin
#96. Art is always the index of social vitality, the moving finger that records the destiny of a civilization. A wise statesman should keep an anxious eye on this graph, for it is more significant than a decline in exports or a fall in the value of a nation's currency.
Herbert Read
#97. Now I know what a statesman is; he's a dead politician. We need more statesmen.
Bob Edwards
#98. The quest for peace is the statesman's most exacting duty ... Practical progress to lasting peace is his fondest hope.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#99. If people of one's own side have good conduct, it adds power to oneself. The misconduct on the contrary render one powerless. The enemy taks advantage of it. A skilled statesman never allows enemy to win over.
Chanakya
#100. A statesman is any politician it's considered safe to name a school after.
Bill Vaughan
