Top 237 Quotes & Sayings by Madeleine Albright - Page 3

What you have to be concerned about are the extremists. On the whole, we need to understand the more moderate Muslims before they become more radicalized.

Glass ceilings have been broken, but more have to be broken.

I teach at Georgetown, and I see that the students have so many different interests. The main thing is to match your passion with your knowledge, because you can't just be passionate without knowing the facts, and facts are really boring without passion.

We must be authors of the history of our age.

I'm not a person who thinks the world would be entirely different if it was run by women. If you think that, you've forgotten what high school was like.

Our life comes in segments, and we have to understand that we can have it all if we're not trying to do it all at once.

I am not a fatalist. I have just been reading War and Peace and Tolstoy is such a fatalist. I think people can make a difference... I am an optimist who worries a lot.

You [young people] all are just much more internationally-minded and traveled and knowledgeable in languages than any other previous generation. So many of you are already doing a lot of international relations, I think. I so believe in student networks, and people that either study abroad or come to the United States to study, and the relationships that you all develop. You learn a lot from each other, but you all will see each other again in jobs along the way. And I think that makes a big difference. I so believe in what students can do.

Armageddon is not a foreign policy.

I'm for democracy, but imposing democracy is an oxymoron. People have to choose democracy, and it has to come up from below.

Though I am flattered that Governor Palin has chosen to cite me as a source of wisdom, what I said had nothing to do with politics. This is yet another example of McCain and Palin distorting the truth, and all the more reason to remember that this campaign is not about gender, it is about which candidate has an agenda that will improve the lives of all Americans, including women. The truth is, if you care about the status of women in our society and in our troubled economy, the best choice by far is Obama-Biden.

I am the only high-ranking U.S. official to ever meet with Kim Jong-il, and we are the same height and both wear high heels.

I think there has to be the sense that once you have climbed the ladder of success, that you don't push it away from the building.

The main thing is to remain oneself, under any circumstances; that was and is our common purpose.

China is in its own category - too big to ignore, too repressive to embrace, difficult to influence, and very, very proud.

When we're trying to solve difficult national issues its sometimes necessary to talk to adversaries as well as friends. Historians have a word for this: diplomacy.

We must help women in every society to have their voices heard.

Leaders are made by the situations they are involved in. I think that some rise to the occasion and some do not.

If intelligence were a television set, it would be an early black-and-white model with poor reception, so that much of the picture was gray and the figures on the screen were snowy and indistinct. You could fiddle with the knobs all you wanted, but unless you were careful, what you would see often depended more on what you expected or hoped to see than on what was really there.

the purpose of foreign policy is to persuade others to do what we want or, better yet, to want what we want.

Democracy cannot be built on revenge and you will not have the support of the world if you are intolerant and take the law into your own hands.

I was struck by the joy of those pilots in committing coldblooded murder . . . Frankly, this is not cojones. This is cowardice.

Only in America could a refugee girl from Central Europe become secretary of state.

Today, I say that no nation in the world need be left out of the global system we are constructing.

What people have the capacity to choose, they have the ability to change.

We are very hip on the fact that America's always No. 1. On this we are not, in terms of the number of women in our legislative branches and obviously as head of state. We need to push on that. I hate to say this: It isn't all men's fault. I think some of it is our own attitude and approach. Some of it very healthy, that women want to make choices about their lives and how they want to spend their time, and what they value.

There were always jokes about Hillary Clinton channeling Eleanor Roosevelt, but Eleanor Roosevelt was really instrumental at the UN, and would want to meet with various other delegates.

There's nobody who's had a resume like [Hillary Clinton] that's run for president.

I got married three days after graduation, and the first thing I did what I was expected to do which was to work on a small newspaper. So we were in Chicago where my husband worked for the Chicago Sun-Times and we were having dinner with his editor and he said 'So what are you 'gonna do honey?' and I said 'I'm going to work on a newspaper', and he said 'I don't think so", because Newspaper Guild regulations said that I couldn't work on the same newspaper as my husband.

My deepest regret from my years in public service is the failure of the United States and the international community to act sooner to halt these crimes.

There is plenty of room in the world for mediocre men but there is no room for mediocre women.

There is a significant moral difference between a person who commits a violent crime and a person who tries to cross a border illegally in order to put food on the family table. Such migrants my violate our laws against illicit entry, but if that's all they do they are trespassers, not criminals. They deserve to have their dignity respected.

The process of education in the oldest profession in the world is like any other educational process, in that it requires time andeffort and patience; it can only be acquired by taking one step at a time, though the steps become accelerated after the first few.

Women have to work exceptionally hard.

I really do think about the fact that every day counts. I believe that every individual counts, and so I believe that every day counts and I try not to waste it.

A skilled diplomat rarely generates extreme reactions.

Libraries are fun, educational, and the biggest bargain on the face of the earth.

The cover-up, more than the initial wrongdoing, is what is most likely to bring you down.

But I think there are some who believe they are actually protecting women, you know, and that it is better for women to be taken care of. I think women want to take care of themselves, and I think having a voice in how that is done is very important. And frankly, I don’t understand — I mean, I’m obviously a card-carrying Democrat — but I can’t understand why any woman would want to vote for Mitt Romney, except maybe Mrs. Romney.

Mahmoud Abbas is a puppet.

I do not believe that things happen accidentally; I believe you earn them.

As a child, I really did see buildings bombed, and what makes me different from an American that's the same age as I am is that I can understand what happens when there is fighting in a way that they couldn't.

What's the point of having this superb military you're always talking about if we can't use it?

We have to understand where we have strategic relationships that require us to take a different approach. I guess the easiest way to describe it is: different strokes for different folks.

The victor of the war in Iraq is Iran.

I think that the Middle East is the largest piece of unfinished business that we all have. I happen to believe in the democratization process.

It takes more than one dove to make peace in the Middle East.

Every new president inherits headaches, but President Obama has inherited an entire emergency room.

We went to the same college so I know [Hillary Clinton's] study habits, but when she was first lady of Arkansas, she did a lot of things already for children, and she was head of the Children's Defense Fund, and that's how I first heard her or met her, she was very very involved in really a very important social program to do something about children and women and education.

In 1953, the United States played a significant role in orchestrating the overthrow of Iran's popular prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh. The Eisenhower administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons, but the coup was clearly a setback for Iran's political development and it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs.

In A Man With a Pipe, my brother observed that although my father had been seen as intellectual and my mother more a creature of temperament, she had often been the more levelheaded of the two. In sum, we miss them as we love them, equally and always.

The system he (President Hosni Mubarak) is recommending would make it virtually impossible for truly independent parties to participate. Sham democracy should be exposed for what it truly is.

I never dreamed about one day becoming Secretary of State. It's not that I was modest; it's just that I had never seen a Secretary of State in a skirt.

We have the most generous immigration policy, but what is a concern is when illegal immigrants come and undermine a variety of the systems that work in order to make our society function.

In diplomacy, clear-cut wins and losses are rare.

The Framework Agreement is one of the best things the [Clinton] Administration has done because it stopped a nuclear weapons program in North Korea.

I do think that she [Hillary Clinton] will prove that she's the best, whether she's in the White House or somewhere else. I think it will very much be a historic moment, when we are able to say that we actually have done something like put a woman in the White House. Its very interesting to think about considering its taken us long as it has.

Our predecessors understood that the ties that bind America are far stronger than disagreements over any particular policy and far more durable and profound than any party affiliation.

Foreign policy is now a huge field. It isn't just people who are studying political science. There are so many aspects to it in terms of understanding hard science for people who are studying climate change, or people who are interested in health policy or food security, or people who care about education.

If we have to use force, it is because we are America.