Quotations Related to IR (By Ali Hameed Khan)

1. Adolf Hitler: When diplomacy ends, War begins.

2. Allama Muhammad Iqbal Bang-e-Dra-163: The glitter of modern civilization dazzles the sight; but
this clever craftsmanship is a mosaic of false jewels.
3. Aneurin Bevan: It is an axiom, enforced by the experience of the ages that they who rule industrially
will rule politically.
4. Anonymous: When a diplomat says yes he means perhaps, when he says perhaps he means no; and
when he says no, he is not a diplomat.
5. Arundhati Roy, War Talk: Nationalism of one kind or another was the cause of most of the genocide
of the twentieth century.
6. Bertrand Russell: The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain
of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
7. Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye: I guess the only time most people think about injustice is when it
happens to them.
8. Desiderious Erasmus: War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it.
9. Dwight D. Eisenhower: The world must learn to work together, or finally it will not work at all.
10. F.M Ayub: The foreign policy of a country is in a sense a projection of its internal policies, social,
political and economic.
11. Fidel Castro: They talk about the failure of socialism but where is the success of Capitalism in Africa,
Asia, and Latin America.
12. George Bernard Shaw: Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others
because you were born in it.
13. Goethe: Patriotism corrupts history.
14. Hans J. Morgenthau: International politics, like all politics, is a struggle for power.
15. Ibn Taymiyyah: Don’t depend too much on anyone in this world because even your own shadow
leaves you when you are in darkness.
16. J. W Burton: The concept of power politics is far more useful in describing a dynamic world in which
power is means by which the demands for change and resistance to change are advanced.
17. Lemony Snicket, The Blank Book: People don't always get what they deserve in this world.
18. Mahmoud Abbas: We always have hoped that American diplomacy deploys itself in dialogue and
persuasion rather than by ultimatums. That is the path we want in international relations.
19. Mao Zedong: Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
20. Mao Zedong: Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.
21. Nelson Mandela: If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is
the United States of America.
22. Samuel P. Huntington (The Clash of Civilizations): The West won the world not by the superiority of
its ideas or values or religion […] but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence.
Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.
23. Shirin Ebadi (Noble prize laureate): If you can't eliminate injustice, at least tell everyone about it.
24. Shirin Ebadi: Women are the victims of this patriarchal culture, but they are also its carriers. Let us
keep in mind that every oppressive man was raised in the confines of his mother's home.
25. Thomas Pickering: In archaeology you uncover the unknown. In diplomacy you cover the known.
26. Thucydides: The strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to
accept.
27. Tony Benn: All war represents a failure of diplomacy.
28. Will Durant: To say nothing, especially when speaking, is half the art of diplomacy.
29. Will Rogers: The United States never lost a war or won a conference.