Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy.

When you have no basis for an argument, abuse the plaintiff.

Let us move from the era of confrontation to the era of negotiation.

I’ve known and continue to know every one of these major world leaders by their first names, and I have access to them.

My constant prayer, my number one foreign goal, is to bring peace to Israel. And in the process to Israel’s neighbours.

I have always seen the United States as a force of good. And I have learned that there is the idealistic part about what we can do at the U.N. and there is a doable part. And I have learned what is more doable.

Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.

The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.

It is hardly an exaggeration to say that oral teachers and sign teachers found it difficult to sit down in the same room without quarreling, and there was intolerance upon both sides. To say ‚oral method‘ to a sign teacher was like waving a red flag in the face of a bull, and to say ‚sign language‘ to an oralist aroused the deepest resentment.

Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.

Never stir up litigation. A worse man can scarcely be found than one who does this.

If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.

Now if there is one thing that we do worse than any other nation, it is try and manage somebody else’s affairs.

To be clear: we have fights and problems like any other couple.

Unless both sides win, no agreement can be permanent.

I haven’t gone out of my way to seek advice from people I don’t know.

You have to make sure you know why you are going to war and then use decisive force to end it as soon as possible.

The Bush Administration’s failure to be consistently involved in helping Israel achieve peace with the Palestinians has been both wrong for our friendship with Israel, as well as badly damaging to our standing in the Arab world.

For diplomacy to be effective, words must be credible – and no one can now doubt the word of America.

Foreign policy is like human relations, only people know less about each other.

We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.

Sometimes if you want to get rid of the gun, you have to pick the gun up.

For many of the world’s conflicts, it is difficult even to conjure up a feasible settlement.

Law is always better than war.

Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.

If you get down and quarell everyday, you’re saying prayers to the devil, I say.

When we quarrel, how we wish we had been blameless.

I’m not a natural joiner.

A disagreement or incident involving someone who’s not that important to you, like a guy who cut you off in traffic or a rude cashier, is something that should roll off your shoulders. Save the effort for resolving conflicts with the people you cherish.

We can’t afford to be killing one another.

Enemies are so stimulating.

It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.

I don’t know how to work a room. It’s a real skill.

Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.

Intervention only works when the people concerned seem to be keen for peace.

I want the Israeli government to be made accountable for its behaviour to the Palestinians, and I want the people of the U.S. to cease acting as if they don’t understand what is going on.

I would counsel people to go to college, because it’s one of the best times in your life in terms of who you meet and develop a broad set of intellectual skills.

I make friends faster and easier than journalists.

Throughout my career, I learned plenty about war on the battlefield, but I learned even more about the importance of finding peace. And that is what the State Department and U.S.A.I.D. do: prevent the wars that we can avoid so that we fight only the ones we must.

When I was elected President nobody asked me to negotiate between Israel and Egypt. It was not even a question raised in my campaign. But I felt that one of the reasons that I was elected President was to try to bring peace to the Holy Land.

If you are not being bullied all I would say – cause I like to talk about the other side of it as well – is you know, be someone that nurtures, and if there’s someone in your class that maybe doesn’t have a lot of friends, be the person that sits with them in the cafeteria sometimes; be the bigger person.

Occasionally the conflict between ‚what we stand for‘ and ‚what we do‘ has been forthrightly addressed.

When things haven’t gone well for you, call in a secretary or a staff man and chew him out. You will sleep better and they will appreciate the attention.

Diplomacy: the art of restraining power.

To compromise simply means that you go a tiny bit below what you know is right.

Nobody’s ever said that pins are a tool of diplomacy.

The most intense conflicts, if overcome, leave behind a sense of security and calm that is not easily disturbed. It is just these intense conflicts and their conflagration which are needed to produce valuable and lasting results.

The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.

Consider, when you are enraged at any one, what you would probably think if he should die during the dispute.

In a world of complex threats, our security and leadership depends on all elements of our power – including strong and principled diplomacy.

I have a scheme for stopping war. It’s this – no nation is allowed to enter a war till they have paid for the last one.

Generally, the view that I’ve had on Twitter is if you’re on Twitter, you’re in, like, the meme – you’re in meme war land. If you’re on Twitter, you’re in the arena. And so, essentially, if you attack me, it is therefore OK for me to attack back.

Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.

Always remember that your calmness under fire is your best defense in any argument or discussion.

All wars signify the failure of conflict resolution mechanisms, and they need post-war rebuilding of faith, trust and confidence.

But I do not believe that the world would be entirely different if there were more women leaders. Maybe if everybody in leadership was a woman, you might not get into the conflicts in the first place. But if you watch the women who have made it to the top, they haven’t exactly been non-aggressive – including me.

No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time.

Foe means enemy. Now, will we have differences of opinion with the Russians? Yes. Will they get mad at us from time to time, and we get mad at them? That’s part of the normal diplomatic relations.

No nation should threaten its neighbors by massing troops along the border.

I was in enough to get along with people. I was never socially inarticulate. Not a loner. And that saved my life, saved my sanity. That and the writing. But to this day I distrust anybody who thought school was a good time. Anybody.

The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries.