Statesman Quotes
Conservative, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others.
Ambrose Bierce
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
What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.
Aristotle
A statesman who keeps his ear permanently glued to the ground will have neither elegance of posture nor flexibility of movement.
Abba Eban
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
It is neither the statesman nor the friend who is asking your help and assistance, but simply the man.
Pierre Laval
He's passed from rising hope to elder statesman without any intervening period whatsoever.
Michael Foot
The statesman's duty is to bridge the gap between his nation's experience and his vision.
Henry A. Kissinger
The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opposition than from his fervent supporters.
Walter Lippmann
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
A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.
Edmund Burke
The same contingencies of time and space that force a statesman or soldier to make decisions, impel the historian, though with less urgency, to make up his mind.
Samuel E. Morison
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
Today America lost a great elder statesman, a committed public servant, and leader of the Senate. And today I lost a treasured friend. Ted Kennedy was an iconic, larger than life United States senator whose influence cannot be overstated. Many have come before, and many will come after, but Ted Kennedy's name will always be remembered as someone who lived and breathed the United States Senate and the work completed within its chamber.
Orrin Hatch
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
A politician is a man who understands government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead for 15 years.
Harry S. Truman
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
War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, the lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
You can always get the truth from an American statesman after he has turned seventy, or given up all hope of the Presidency.
Wendell Phillips