Daily Inspiration Quote by Abba Eban

Diplomacy’s cruelest joke is that yesterday’s “unthinkable” becomes tomorrow’s “missed opportunity,” and Abba Eban captures that time-lag with a scalpel. “Time and again” isn’t mere emphasis; it’s indictment by pattern. He’s not describing a single bad call but a recurring political reflex: leaders treating compromise as a toxin in real time, then romanticizing it once the costs of refusal arrive in the mail.

The line works because it turns government into a character with a perverse emotional arc. “Rejected” is an active verb of power, the chest-thump of sovereignty. “Longed for” is the verb of regret, softer, private, almost humiliating. Eban compresses a whole cycle of state behavior into two beats: posture now, mourn later. The subtext is that policy isn’t failing for lack of information; it’s failing because incentives reward defiance over foresight. Leaders don’t just miscalculate; they curate a public identity that can’t be seen “conceding” until reality forces their hand.

Context matters: Eban, an Israeli diplomat and master rhetorician, spent decades watching peace proposals ricochet off domestic politics, regional distrust, and international grandstanding. His phrasing implies an audience that already knows the headlines and the funerals that follow stalemates. It’s also a warning to negotiators: the “no” you issue to look strong today may be the “yes” you beg for later, only then at a higher price and with fewer options.