War is the statesman's game the priest's delight the lawyer's jest the hired assassin's trade.

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.

To delight in war is a merit in the soldier a dangerous quality in the captain and a positive crime in the statesman.

Compromise makes a good umbrella but a poor roof it is temporary expedient often wise in party politics almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship.

The successful revolutionary is a statesman the unsuccessful one a criminal.

Conservative n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others.

You can always get the truth from an American statesman after he has turned seventy or given up all hope of the Presidency.

At home you always have to be a politician when you're abroad you almost feel yourself a statesman.

He was what I often think is a dangerous thing for a statesman to be - a student of history and like most of those who study history he learned from the mistakes of the past how to make new ones.

If there is not the war you don't get the great general if there is not a great occasion you don't get a great statesman if Lincoln had lived in a time of peace no one would have known his name.