statesmen quotes

   It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in our society today† This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking.

- Isaac Asimov
 'My Own View', in R Holdstock (ed) Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1978).

Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen, it really seems to mean that half a loaf is better than a whole loaf.

- G(ilbert) K(eith) Chesterton
  What's Wrong with the World, ch.3.

   A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.With consistencya great soul has simply nothing to do.

- RalphWaldo Emerson
Essays: First Series,'Self-Reliance'.

Somemenare bornkings; and someare bornstatesmen. The two are seldom the same.

- George Bernard Shaw
  Peter Cauchon. Saint  Joan, sc.4.

The First World War had begunimposed on the statesmen of Europe by railway timetables. It was an unexpected climax to the railway age.

- A(lan) J(ohn) P(ercivale) Taylor
  The FirstWorldWar, ch.1.

Traters†are a unfortunate class of people.If they wasn't they wouldn't be traters. They conspire to bust up a countrythey fail, and they're traters. They bust her, and they become statesmen and heroes.

- Artemus pseudonym of  Charles Farrar Browne Ward
  ArtemusWard in London and Other Papers,'TheTower of London'.

People and provinces must not be bartered about from sovereign to sovereign as if they were chattels, or pawns in a game. Self-determination is not a mere phrase. It is an imperative principle, which statesmen will henceforth ignore at their peril.

- (Thomas) Woodrow Wilson
  Address to Congress,11 Feb.