Sometimes you move publicly, sometimes privately. Sometimes quietly, sometimes at the top of your voice. And sometimes an active policy is best advanced by doing nothing until the right timeöor never.

-Baker,James Addison, III
  Of statesmanship. In Time,19 Mar.

He has all the qualities that go to the making of a leader of the Conservative Party. He is not stupid, but he is very dull. He is not eloquent, but he talks well. He is not honest, politically, but he is most evangelical.He has a Beckett little money, but not much. He always conforms to the party policy.

-Baron
  Commenting on Sir Samuel Hoare's appointment as Foreign Secretary.

Economists have the least influence on policy where they know the most and are most agreed†the most influence on policy where they know the least and disagree most.

-Blinder, Alan
  Hard Heads, Soft Hearts.

Kings will be tyrants from policy when subjects are rebels from principle.

-Burke, Edmund
  Reflections on the Revolution in France.

English policy is to float lazily downstream, occasionally putting out a diplomatic boathook to avoid collisions.

-of Salisbury
  Letter to Lord Lytton, 9 Mar.

Politique inte¤  rieure, je fais la guerre; politique exte¤  rieure, je fais toujours la guerre. Je fais toujours la guerre. My home policy? I wage war. My foreign policy? I wage war. Always, everywhere, I wage war.

-Clemenceau, Georges
  Speech to the Chamber of Deputies, 8 Mar.

  The foreign policy of the noble Earl,Lord Russell, may be summed up in two truly expressive words: meddle and muddle.

-Derby, Edward Geoffrey Smith Stanley, 14th Earl of
  Speech in the House of Lords, Feb, referring to the Prime Minister's policy on the  American Civil War.

England's foreign policy should always be inspired by the love of freedom. There should be a sympathy with freedom, a desire to give it scope, founded not upon visionary ideas but upon the long experience of many generations within the shores of this happy isle, that in freedom one lays the firmest foundations both of loyalty and order.

-Gladstone,W(illiam) E(wart)
  Speech, West Calder, 27 Nov.

Historians spend their lives and lavish ink Explaining how great commonwealths collapse From great defects of policyöperhaps The cause is sometimes simpler than they think. † Have more states perished, then, For having shackled the enquiring mind, Than those who, in their folly not less blind, Trusted the servile womb to breed free men?

-Hope, A(lec) D(erwent)
  'Advice toYoung Ladies', in Collected Poems1930^1970 (1972).

If some of my former colleagues are to be believed, I must be the first minister in history to have resigned because he was in full agreement with government policy.

-Howe, Baron
  Personal statement on his resignation, House of Commons,13 Nov.

It is always the best policy to speak the truthöunless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar.

-Jerome,Jerome K(lapka)
  In The Idler (edited by Robert Barr and Jerome), Feb.

No foreign policy, no matter how ingenious, has any chance of success if it is born in the minds of a fewand carried in the heart of none.

-Kissinger, HenryAlfred
  Speech to International Platform  Association, 2  Aug.

Wisdom and policy dictate that we must do as destiny demands and keep peace with the irresistible march of events.

-Napoleon I
  Said to  Alexander I of Russia, 2 Feb.

I am sure that the immediate abolition of the slave trade is the first, the principal, the most indispensable act of policy, of dutyand of justice the legislature of this country has to take, if it is indeed their wish to secure those important objects† For we continue to this hour a barbarous traffic in slaves, we continue it even yet, in spite of all our great and undeniable pretensions as civilisation.

-Pitt,William known as  theYounger
  Speech to the House of Commons, 2 Apr.The House did not abolish slavery until1806.

French truth,Dutch prowess,British policy, Hibernian learning, Scotch civility, Spaniards'dispatch,Danes' wit, are mainly seen in thee.

-Rochester,JohnWilmot, 2nd Earl of
c.1673  'Upon Nothing', stanza16 (published1679).

Making foreign policy is like pornographic movies†more fun doing it than watching it.

-Rogers,William Pierce
  On becoming Under-Secretary of State for Economic Affairs,7 Jun.

Inthefieldof world policy,Iwoulddedicatethisnationto the policy of the good neighbour.

-Roosevelt, Franklin D(elano)
  Inaugural address, 4 Mar.

Your honesty is not to be based either on religion or policy.Bothyourreligionand policy must be basedon it.

-Ruskin,John
  Time andTide, letter 8.

Afew weeksago Ihad a revelation and told my secretary that I could give him a synthesis of forty-six years of living with economic policy. It is: 'Economic policy is random with respect to the performance of the American economy, but, thank God, there isn't much of it.'

-Stein, Herbert
  Washington Bedtime Stories.

As a Minister, it is my policy to keep all the nationalities within the Habsburg monarchy in a balanced state of well-modulated dissatisfaction.

-Taaffe, Eduard FranzJosef, Graf von
Letters.