Results for “Laurie Bristow”

The basics of this are to understand what your interests actually are and what your priorities are—what your hierarchy of interests is. What are the things that really matter to you? What are the things on which you can be prepared to compromise?

Nobody ever has control of all of the levers, and nobody ever has complete information. But also, there's always the day after. When dealing with really difficult issues it's very easy to get stuck in the moment and to lose sight of where we do want to be five or ten years from now.

I am never again going to accept a box of Ferrero Rocher from anyone. We need to do away with the idea of what diplomats do and how they work. Being diplomatic in the sense of not really saying what you mean or softening the message—it's been absolutely essential to be clear and precise.

When you're trying to understand the motivations of people, quite often understanding the emotional drivers is at least as important as understanding the facts that took them there. In the case of Putin and the people around him, it's resentment and it's anger and it's determination to recover something they believe they lost.

History repeats itself, first as a tragedy, the second as a farce. I think one of the things I have learned with history is that it's important to study it, but it will rarely give you the right answer. Quite often because there is no right answer, and what you're really looking for is to understand how you got here.