[W]e didn't do much to alter the course of human history, did we?' said Philip. 'As one old spy to another, I reckon I'd have been more use running a boys' club. Don't know what you feel.'
Showing posts with label diplomacy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label diplomacy. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 27, 2022
John le Carré, Silverview
Friday, June 09, 2017
Virtue and ambition, unfortunately, seldom lodge together.
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
Labels:
ambition,
bureaucracy,
diplomacy,
government,
international relations,
Montaigne,
politics,
power
Sunday, December 11, 2016
During his later years he has often said—and many a man has had, and will have, to say the same—that he had learned these people too late.
Sir Richard Francis Burton, Mission to Gelele, King of Dahome
Sir Richard Francis Burton, Mission to Gelele, King of Dahome
Labels:
abroad,
Benin,
colonialism,
diplomacy,
international relations,
prudence
Friday, January 01, 2016
Athenians: Aim at what is feasible, holding in view the real sentiments of us both;
since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only
in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can
and the weak suffer what they must....
Melians: As we think, at any rate, it is expedient —we speak as we are obliged, since you enjoin us to let right alone and talk only of interest— that you should not destroy what is our common protection, the privilege of being allowed in danger to invoke what is fair and right, and even to profit by arguments not strictly valid if they can be got to pass current....
Athenians: Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can..... It is certain that those who do not yield to their equals, who keep terms with their superiors, and are moderate towards their inferiors, on the whole succeed best.
Thucydides (Book Five), The History of the Peloponnesian War
Melians: As we think, at any rate, it is expedient —we speak as we are obliged, since you enjoin us to let right alone and talk only of interest— that you should not destroy what is our common protection, the privilege of being allowed in danger to invoke what is fair and right, and even to profit by arguments not strictly valid if they can be got to pass current....
Athenians: Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can..... It is certain that those who do not yield to their equals, who keep terms with their superiors, and are moderate towards their inferiors, on the whole succeed best.
Thucydides (Book Five), The History of the Peloponnesian War
Labels:
Athens,
conflict,
diplomacy,
empire,
Greece,
imperialism,
international relations,
justice,
prudence,
Thucydides,
war
Monday, March 03, 2014
Friday, March 29, 2013
The longer I live the more convinced I am that one of the greatest
honors we can confer on other people is to see them as they are, to
recognize not only that they exist, but that they exist in specific ways
and have specific realities.
Shiva Naipaul, quoted by Geoffrey Wheatcroft in the Feb 2002 Atlantic magazine.
Shiva Naipaul, quoted by Geoffrey Wheatcroft in the Feb 2002 Atlantic magazine.
Labels:
civilization,
colonialism,
culture,
dignity,
diplomacy,
history,
humanity,
listening,
Naipaul,
Other,
understanding,
wisdom
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Having noted Chinese immobility, they gained a clearer sense of their own motion. Their appreciation of individual initiative was enhanced as they noted that individuals in China could undertake only what society expected of them. They grasped more sharply the strength of the human personality in the West by observing that the only recognized human entity in China was the collective. They took the measure of the role of competition in their own country when they saw that no one in China could escape his assigned place, for to do so would offend against the established hierarchy. They saw more clearly how important merchants were in Britain by observing how deeply they were scorned in China. They became aware of their own devotion to the new by discovering the cult of the immutable. In short, they gained a clearer insight into the fact that individualism, competition, and innovation were the wellsprings of their own wealth and power.
Alain Peyrefitte's observation, on the "failed" Macartney expedition to China 1792-94, in his masterful The Collision of Two Civilisations.
Alain Peyrefitte's observation, on the "failed" Macartney expedition to China 1792-94, in his masterful The Collision of Two Civilisations.
Labels:
bureaucracy,
business,
capitalism,
change,
China,
civilization,
diplomacy,
entrepreneurs,
freedom,
humanity,
identity,
illusion,
liberty,
life,
modernity,
progress,
The West
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Force is that X that turns anybody who is subjected to it into a thing. Exercised to the limit, it turns man into a thing in the most literal sense: it makes a corpse out of him. Somebody was here, and the next minute there is nobody here at all.
Simone Weil, The Illiad, Or The Poem of Force
Simone Weil, The Illiad, Or The Poem of Force
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