Kindness solves more problems than diplomacy, wealth, intelligence, clout, force, law, and dominion combined.
Richelle E. GoodrichTags: intelligence kindness compassion wealth law force diplomacy richelle solving-problems dominion richelle-goodrich clout
Merrill Meewee knew his stones. As a boy in Kenya, skipping stones was his favorite free-time activity. There had been an abundance of saucer-shaped missiles on the banks of his father’s own fishpond. Fat, river-smoothed disks, they skipped ten, twelve, sixteen times before slipping beneath the surface with a watery plop. His father, a man of little wealth but great forbearance, was not pleased with his boy’s solitary pastime, but he never ordered him to stop. Instead, he asked the boy how many stones he thought the pond could hold. I don’t know, Meewee remembered answering. A hundred thousand?
Oh, such a big number! And how many stones do you suppose you’ve thrown already?
Merrill, who was an excellent student, calculated the number of stones he might have tossed in an hour and how many free hours were left each day after school and chores, how many afternoons in how many years since he first discovered the sport. I would estimate 14,850, he informed his father with a certain amount of swagger.
His father was impressed. So many? And all of them have gone to the bottom?
Of course they’ve gone to the bottom, he had said, embarrassed by his father’s apparent ignorance. They’re stones. They’re heavier than water.
And heavier than fishes?
Of course heavier than fishes.
Good, good, his father concluded, patting him on the head. Keep at it, son, and soon I won’t have to work so hard.
Father?
It’s true. When you fill up my pond with your stones, I won’t need nets and plungers to harvest the fish. I’ll simply wade up to my ankles and pick them like squash.
It was a lesson in diplomacy, as much as aquaculture, and it stayed with him all these years.
Tags: diplomacy aquaculture
Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn’t have to be like this.
Stephen HawkingTags: inspirational communication diplomacy
You have no idea how much it contributes to the general politeness and pleasantness of diplomacy when you have a little quiet armed force in the background
George F. KennanBefore the thunderous clamor of political debate or war set loose in the world, love insisted on its promise for the possibility of human unity: between men and women, between blacks and whites, northerners and southerners, haves and have-have-nots, self and self.
AberjhaniTags: wisdom love war faith hope spirituality violence unity diplomacy nonviolence conflict-resolution human-rights-day peacism syria aberjhani global-village peace-movement nonviolent-conflict-resolution world-community international-community syrian-civil-war afghanistan-war global-march-for-peace-and-unity political-debate world-peace-day
We have war when at least one of the partes to a conflict wants something more than it wants peace.
Jeane J. KirkpatrickLook and see which way the wind blows before you commit yourself.
AesopTags: diplomacy forethought prudence
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