A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but never remembers her age.

The line is a wry definition of “diplomacy” as social tact: the skilled diplomat attends carefully to what flatters (remembering a birthday) while discreetly avoiding what might offend (mentioning age). It plays on gendered social conventions in which a woman’s age is treated as sensitive information, turning the diplomat into a figure of practiced omission and strategic memory. The humor depends on the contrast between two kinds of “remembering”—one public and celebratory, the other potentially embarrassing—suggesting that successful negotiation, whether in politics or personal relations, often hinges less on truth-telling than on knowing what not to say.