I'm convinced there's a small room in the attic of the Foreign Office where future diplomats are taught to stammer.
Interpretation
The quote humorously suggests that future diplomats are trained to speak hesitantly or ineffectively.
Peter Ustinov's quote humorously critiques the nature of diplomacy, implying that diplomats are not only taught the art of negotiation but also how to navigate the complexities of communication with uncertainty. This stammering metaphor highlights the challenges diplomats face in balancing honesty with the need for tact and diplomacy, while also poking fun at the sometimes awkward nature of political discourse.
In practice
In a speech about the challenges of international relations, one might quote Ustinov to illustrate the complexities of diplomatic communication.
Marriage is like a three-speed gearbox - affection, friendship, love. It is not advisable to crash your gears and go right through to love straightaway. You need to ease your way through. The basis of love is respect, and that needs to be learned from affection and friendship.
I imagine hell like this: Italian punctuality, German humour and English wine.
Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth.
Because they have been in love they have survived everything that life could throw at them, even their own failures.
Corruption is nature's way of restoring our faith in democracy.
World Government is not only possible, it is inevitable; and when it comes, it will appeal to patriotism in its truest sense,in its only sense, the patriotism of humans who love their national heritages so deeply that they wish to preserve them in safety for the common good.
My final word, before I'm done, Is "Cancer can be rather fun"- Provided one confronts the tumour with a sufficient sense of humour. I know that cancer often kills, But so do cars and sleeping pills; And it can hurt till one sweats, So can bad teeth and unpaid debts. A spot of laughter, I am sure, Often accelerates one's cure; So let us patients do our bit To help the surgeons make us fit.
Historical Re-creation, he thought glumly, as they picked their way across, under, over or through the boulders and insect-buzzing heaps of splintered timber, with streamlets running everywhere. Only we do it with people dressing up and running around with blunt weapons, and people selling hot dogs, and the girls all miserable because they can only dress up as wenches, wenching being the only job available to women in the olden days.
He burned his house down for the fire insurance and spent the proceeds on a telescope.
Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been different.
I put a dollar in one of those change machines. Nothing changed.
I was trying to do one-liners and it took me years to realise I just had to be myself. My fear was if I was myself and no one found it funny, I'd have nowhere left to go.
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