Throughout my career, from Jamaica to Nigeria, Pakistan to Switzerland, I've learned that effective diplomacy means more than shaking hands and staging photo ops. It means developing real, robust relationships. It means finding common ground and managing points of differentiation. It means doing genuine, old-fashioned, people-to-people diplomacy.
Interpretation
Effective diplomacy involves building genuine relationships rather than superficial interactions.
In this quote, Linda Thomas-Greenfield emphasizes that successful diplomacy transcends the mere act of meeting and greeting; it requires cultivating authentic connections between people. By focusing on finding common ground and navigating differences, effective diplomacy fosters deeper, more meaningful interactions that can lead to constructive outcomes.
In practice
In a speech about international relations, one might quote this to underline the importance of building connections.
The fact that I made it to where I made it, when I look at where I came, I think is a message to the world and it's also a message to other young people who come from diverse and underprivileged backgrounds, that where they come from does not necessarily have to define where they are going.
Those of us who experience racism cannot, and should not, internalize it, despite the impact that it can have on our everyday lives. We must face it down, every time, no matter whom it's directed towards.
I think countries are now, leaders are now more conscious of the importance of having women engage in their country's development plan. Because again, and I say this over and over and over again, when we invest in women they invest back in their families, they invest in their communities, and they invest in their countries.
The more we elevate people's lives - the more we treat people with dignity and respect and honor their rights and freedoms - the more we discourageand even preventterrorism.
It is unconscionable for Russia to force Ukrainian citizens into Russia, and put them in what will basically be concentration and prisoner camps.
In so many of our communities and countries, racism is endemic. It's built in, like a rot in a frame.
The less you demand total fulfillment from relationships, the more you can appreciate them for the beautiful tapestries they are, in which absolute and relative, perfect and imperfect, infinite and finite are marvelously interwoven. You can stop fighting the shifting tides of relative love and learn to ride them instead. And you come to appreciate more fully the simple, ordinary heroism involved in opening to another person and forging real intimacy.
The white actresses I have known have been allowed to do 10 times more than I shall ever do.
I declare I would rather be a kitten and cry, 'Mew!' than live as I see many of my female acquaintances do, tearing each other's characters to pieces, and wearing out their lives in vanity and vexation of spirit.
It's the damage that we do and never know. It's the words that we don't say that scare me so.
There was a time you saw me once, one afternoon, in the dormitories. There was no one else around, and I was playing this tape, this music. I was sort of dancing with my eyes closed and you saw me.' '...yes, I remember that occasion. I still think about it from time to time.' 'That's funny, so do I.
Competition has been shown to be useful up to a certain point and no further, but cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today, begins where competition leaves off.
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