"Diplomacy is to do and say the nastiest things in the nicest way"
About this Quote
Diplomacy, in Goldberg's framing, is less a velvet glove than a surgical instrument: the point is to cut, but to keep the patient smiling. The joke lands because it collapses a profession draped in ceremony into a simple social trick. We like to imagine diplomacy as restraint, prudence, tact - a civilized alternative to brute force. Goldberg insists it's brute force with better diction.
His phrasing is doing double-duty. "Do and say" widens the indictment beyond rhetoric to action: treaties, sanctions, backroom deals, strategic betrayals. Then he spikes it with "nastiest", a word that refuses neutrality. The nastiness isn't an accident; it's the job. The only "virtue" is delivery, the "nicest way" that makes coercion palatable to allies, publics, and the target on the receiving end.
As a critic writing in the early 20th century, Goldberg would have watched diplomacy marketed as enlightened statecraft while Europe slid toward mechanized slaughter and colonial powers redrew maps with polite communiques. His line reads like a post-mortem on that hypocrisy: the salon language of peace often lubricates decisions that produce suffering far from the chandeliers.
The subtext is bleakly modern. Diplomatic speech becomes a technology of consent, a way to launder aggression through etiquette. It's not simply cynical; it's diagnostic. Goldberg is warning that when politics prizes tone over truth, the "nicest way" can become cover for the nastiest outcomes.
His phrasing is doing double-duty. "Do and say" widens the indictment beyond rhetoric to action: treaties, sanctions, backroom deals, strategic betrayals. Then he spikes it with "nastiest", a word that refuses neutrality. The nastiness isn't an accident; it's the job. The only "virtue" is delivery, the "nicest way" that makes coercion palatable to allies, publics, and the target on the receiving end.
As a critic writing in the early 20th century, Goldberg would have watched diplomacy marketed as enlightened statecraft while Europe slid toward mechanized slaughter and colonial powers redrew maps with polite communiques. His line reads like a post-mortem on that hypocrisy: the salon language of peace often lubricates decisions that produce suffering far from the chandeliers.
The subtext is bleakly modern. Diplomatic speech becomes a technology of consent, a way to launder aggression through etiquette. It's not simply cynical; it's diagnostic. Goldberg is warning that when politics prizes tone over truth, the "nicest way" can become cover for the nastiest outcomes.
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| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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