Daily Inspiration Quote by Henry L. Stimson

Stimson’s line lands like a clipped warning from the grown-up at the table: stop bluffing, because the pot is human lives. The language is deliberately plain, almost domestic - “gamble,” “big stakes,” “master card” - a metaphor that shrinks grand strategy down to a card game to make the recklessness legible. Diplomacy, he implies, already has enough uncertainty baked in; choosing to add more, knowingly, is not boldness but irresponsibility.

The intent is caution with teeth. “We think it will be shortly afterwards” carries the bureaucrat’s hedged optimism - the soothing promise that the leverage everyone is waiting for will arrive soon. Stimson immediately punctures that comfort: “but it seems a terrible thing…” The pivot is the point. He’s not arguing against action; he’s arguing against action without asymmetric advantage, without the one instrument that changes the entire bargaining landscape.

“Master card” is the tell. In Stimson’s era, that phrase makes most sense in the shadow of wartime statecraft, when a single capability (military, industrial, intelligence, later nuclear) could recalibrate what “negotiation” even meant. Subtext: if you don’t yet hold the decisive leverage, you are asking diplomats to trade in promises and psychology while the other side trades in concrete power.

It also reveals Stimson’s moral realism. He’s not romantic about diplomatic purity; he sees negotiation as coercion by other means, and he’s anxious about committing the country to a position it can’t enforce. The quote works because it treats “hope” as a liability when the consequences are irreversible.