The French are ... different

Clever humor/insight as to approaches to the world.

Shashi was Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, United Nations at the time of the quote.

Heard him on NPR while on road yesterday.

Shashi Tharoor - Is the United Nations Still Relevant?:
"In fact, we used to have a nasty little joke about the agreements of the Security Council on all these matters where it was said there was an argument between an American diplomat and a French diplomat and a particular problem, and the American diplomat said, 'You now how we can solve this? We can do this and this and this and we can solve it', and the French diplomat replied, 'Yes, yes, yes, that will work in practice but will it work in theory?'"