Diplomats are just as essential to starting a war as soldiers are to finishing it. You take Diplomacy out of war and the thing would fall flat in a week. – Will Rogers
The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee and I will pay more for that ability than for any other under the sun. – John D. Rockefeller
Foreign diplomats in Rome disconsolately say, Italy is the opposite of Russia. In Moscow nothing is known, yet everything is clear. In Rome everything is public, there are no secrets, everybody talks, things are at times flamboyantly enacted, yet one understands nothing. – Luigi Barzini