“You don’t talk to Ahmadinejad. First of all, he’s not the decision maker. When Senator Obama suggests that he would be prepared to meet with him, he says such a meeting first has to be prepared. What he means is that you have to coordinate with your allies - all your allies. Secondly, it means you have to check whether you can put together an agenda for a lower-level meeting. If it becomes clear that you can’t put together such an agenda, then you don’t hold a meeting at a high level - the presidential level - because it’s not going to lead anywhere. But if you can produce something that you know will lead somewhere, then it’s silly not to do that.”

—  Dennis Ross

Haaretz, October 23, 2008. http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/g-d-help-us-if-this-resolutely-dull-as-dishwater-solid-b-cliche-ridden-power-groveling-middle-aged-windbag-whose-only-known-professional-accomplishment-was-controlling-his-bowel-movements-during/

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "You don’t talk to Ahmadinejad. First of all, he’s not the decision maker. When Senator Obama suggests that he would be …" by Dennis Ross?
Dennis Ross photo
Dennis Ross 4
American diplomat 1948

Related quotes

Laurie Anderson photo

“When you hold a grudge, you want someone else's sorrow to reflect your level of hurt but the two rarely meet.”

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 135

Ram Dass photo

“What you meet in another being is the projection of your own level of evolution.”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now
Abraham Lincoln photo

“You say A. is white, and B. is black. It is color, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own. You do not mean color exactly? You mean the whites are intellectually the superiors of the blacks, and, therefore have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1850s
Context: If A. can prove, however conclusively, that he may, of right, enslave B. Why may not B. snatch the same argument, and prove equally, that he may enslave A? You say A. is white, and B. is black. It is color, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own. You do not mean color exactly? You mean the whites are intellectually the superiors of the blacks, and, therefore have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own. But, say you, it is a question of interest; and, if you can make it your interest, you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you.

Fragment on slavery (1 April 1854?), as quoted in Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln http://web.archive.org/web/20140203223031/http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln2/1:264?rgn=div1;view=fulltext (1953), Vol. 2, pp. 222-223

T.S. Eliot photo

“There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;”

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)
Context: There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands,
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

Douglas Coupland photo
Kabir photo
Ramana Maharshi photo
Oprah Winfrey photo
Winston S. Churchill photo

“I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

On his 75th birthday (1947), in reply to a question on whether he was afraid of death, quoted in the N. Y. Times Magazine on November 1, 1964, p. 40 according to Quote It Completely! (1998), Gerhart, Wm. S. Hein Publishing, p. 262 ISBN 1575884003
Post-war years (1945–1955)

Related topics