Top 35 Statesman Quotes

A politician is a statesman who approaches every question with an open mouth.

This country deserves a statesman who can represent the people with proper decorum, respect, and knowledge of what’s happening in the world, and I don’t believe that Donald Trump represents any of that.

Now I know what a statesman is; he’s a dead politician. We need more statesmen.

It is unnecessary to say that Fidel Castro possesses the high qualities of a fighter and statesman: our path, our struggle, and our triumph we owed to his vision.

We got a copy of the ‘New Statesman’ at my grammar school in Wigton, Cumbria, in the 1950s. It sat mint fresh every week on the library table, with two or three other bargain-offer magazines. The ‘Statesman’ came out of the unimaginable Great World. I started to read it then and have pegged along ever since.

The three great ends which a statesman ought to propose to himself in the government of a nation, are one, Security to possessors; two, facility to acquirers; and three, hope to all.

My parents were Northern Ireland Labour party people. We read the ‘Guardian’ and the ‘New Statesman,’ listened to the BBC. The house was full of books. We didn’t get a television until ‘That Was The Week That Was’ started. There was nothing to do but read.

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.

A statesman cannot afford to be a moralist.

It is neither the statesman nor the friend who is asking your help and assistance, but simply the man.

I am both astonished and honored beyond expression to be chosen as your 2011 Christian Statesman of the Year.

A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.

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.

It is only natural that for any statesman at the helm of any government the question of his country’s security should be a concern of the utmost importance.

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.

My father was a statesman, I am a political woman. My father was a saint. I am not.

You know, a statesman is a dead politician.

A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities.

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.

The people who despise America are the editors of the ‘New Statesman.’ Their green-card applications must have been turned down.

I feel like the youthful experience is what drives the creativity, and I feel like experience and maturity as an adult, experience as an elder statesman, that refines it.

A statesman who confines himself to popular legislation – or, for the matter of that, a playwright who confines himself to popular plays – is like a blind man’s dog who goes wherever the blind man pulls him, on the ground that both of them want to go to the same place.

The statesman shears the sheep; the politician skins them.

Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier.

Henry Kissinger is perhaps the best-known American statesman of the 20th century.

The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opposition than from his fervent supporters.

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.

No branch of the law is of more importance to the counsellor, the statesman, or the citizen, than a thorough acquaintance with the Constitution and laws of the Federal Government, as they are administered and as they affect the rights of the people.

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.

I think the first person to call me ‘Britain’s Obama’ was Martin Bright at the New Statesman. Harriet Harman made the comparison once at a conference; it was very flattering but it made me cringe slightly.

He’s passed from rising hope to elder statesman without any intervening period whatsoever.

That statesman is indeed happy who can count as his friends the really honest and consistent, the true Patriots, and the men of honorable thought.

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

A statesman… must wait until he hears the steps of God sounding through events, then leap up and grasp the hem of His garment.

A politician is a person with whose politics you don’t agree; if you agree with him he’s a statesman.