Top 237 Quotes & Sayings by Madeleine Albright - Page 4

One of my trips was to meet with the Gulf Cooperation Council with all the Saudi foreign ministers, and when we started the meeting I said 'Perhaps you've noticed that I'm not dressed the same as my predecessors", but no-one had a problem and I was never treated with anything other than respect...So I did not have problems with that, interestingly enough.

No one has done what Saddam Hussein has done, or is thinking of doing. He is producing weapons of mass destruction, and he is qualitatively and quantitatively different from other dictators.

Often if you don't speak up, whatever you thought was stupid to say some man would say and then everyone would say 'as he said'.

When combined with information and communication technologies, microcredit can unleash new opportunities for the world's poorest entrepreneurs and thereby revitalize the village economies they serve.

I went to college somewhere between the invention of the iPad and the discovery of fire... but I had gone to a women's college.

I can't see democracy occurring by force - after an Iraqi war, because of the fallout from that.

I consider it my patriotic duty as an ordinary citizen - not as Secretary of State - to ask questions. I think we have to ask ourselves the tough questions.

Bill Clinton valued my opinion and always made sure that my views were heard, and people knew that he wanted me to talk.

John Kerry knows more about more subjects than an awful lot of people. But I think it's a very hard job [Secretary of State].

It is an unfortunate fact that in many parts of the world women are considered property. An awful lot of injustice is obviously due to that; not just women's status in the home, but all kinds of laws that are even more discriminating.

And so I think that the idea of America working with other countries to solve problems is good for us, and it is part of digging us out of the “my way or the highway” approach that was evident in the previous eight years.

[John Kerry] actually stole my line because when I became Secretary of State, I said, 'I hope my heels will fill Warren Christopher's shoes.' So he reversed that.

In terms intellectually, [what] shaped my life was the whole Munich thing [the Munich Agreement] that I knew about all my life, in terms of how large powers make decisions that affect small countries, and the unintended consequences of that. The other part is I knew about the Holocaust. l just didn't know that it applied to my family. But that did affect the way I thought about what I was seeing as ethnic cleansing in the Balkans; there's no question about that.

The bottom line is, the more we have a cadre of women moving up the scale, and it doesn't seem threatening, and people realize that women actually work much harder than men, and realize that they need more women in these jobs, I think that goes away.

The interesting part is, that being the United States Secretary of State, most places I went didn't have a problem with me being a woman, because I was representing the United States.

jewels have played a colorful part in the evolution of world affairs. Because precious stones tend to inspire both admiration and greed, leaders have found convenient excuses for seeking them and have used them to impress crowds, reward friends, deprive foes, forge alliances, and justify war. Jewels may find their highest expression in the decorative arts, but they have also earned a place in the art of the possible.

People didn't think that a woman could be the Secretary of State, when my name was out there...but then the Arab Ambassadors at the UN said 'We have no problem dealing with Ambassador Albright, and we would have no problem dealing with Secretary Albright.'

I got married, I really waited a long time - three days after I graduated.

Unfortunately for the Iraqi people, instead of meeting these requirements, for six years, Saddam Hussein has lied, delayed, obstructed and tried to deceive

I was not only the first woman to become secretary of state, I was the first [U.S.] secretary of state of the 21st century. I was the first secretary of state to own a Web site, to visit Internet cafes, and to make Internet access a part of policy.

I think the hardest part [is] the priorities. There are an awful lot of things to do [being Secretary of State].

As far as barriers once I joined the government I was very lucky because I had all of my credentials together, I was Doctor Albright... So when somebody wanted the one woman I made sure that they knew I was dependable and qualified.

The American Dream means being part of a society that allows you to be or do whatever you want, and to have a sense that your individual optimism and hard work will be rewarded. It exists outside of the U.S. as well as inside. People continue to come here because they want to improve their lives, they want to be able to support themselves and they want to live in freedom. A lot of people who criticize this country still send their children here to study.

There are a lot of similar aspects in all the religions. The question is which side of it you hold up.

I had more problems with the men in our own government, and not because they were male chauvinistic pigs but because they had known me for so long. I might have been a carpool mother and a friend of their wife, and so they'd been to my house for dinner and things like and they thought 'how did she get to be secretary of state when I should be secretary of state?' So that was more of a problem.

Well we're good friends so I'm a little prejudice, but I think [Hillary Clinton] is incredibly qualified, and better prepared to be president than almost anyone who's ever run frankly.

I think the jobs [at the top] are unbelievably difficult, and there is nothing easier than second-guessing people.

I think we all are people that are the product of our backgrounds. It's wrong to think that you're not.

Women are more than 50% of almost every country in the world. Countries rob themselves of the resources of women if they keep them as property. It isn't that women can't find work. It's just that women don't get paid for their work and are not recognized properly. It's something that has to be on the international agenda all the time.

I felt that America's duty was not to try to do everything itself, but to foster a sense of commitment that would bring out the best in every country.

After the Cold War, to rally the American people to understand that we had to be a part of solutions. It's one thing to say that we have to run everything, it's another to say we don't want anything to do with it.

You can't just think that you will get a job for no good reason... And I think that the other part is you have to work your way up, you know I did a lot of Xeroxing and getting coffee...I always did what I was asked to do. I delivered. People knew that I would get things done and get them done well. And that is a big part of our resumes, are based on being responsible and being willing to do what needed to be done.

Obviously Iran is a very large problem. It's hard to decide what the number one issue [is], but that is a very threatening problem.

Why, since man and woman were created for each other, had He made their desires so dissimilar? Why should one class of women be able to dwell in luxurious seclusion from the trials of life, while another class performed their loathsome tasks? Surely His wisdom had not decreed that one set of women should live in degradation and in the end should perish that others might live in security, preserve their frappeed chastity, and in the end be saved.

I bought ... the pins with my three daughters in mind; the ships are beautiful, graceful, and moving along at full sail, having long since left home port.

One of the things I write about a bit in my Madam Secretary memoir is on Rwanda, where I was an instructed ambassador at the U.N., and my instructions were to not vote for increased forces there, and I didn't like my instructions. So I got up and called Washington and said, "Change my instructions," and they didn't.

The stunning part was that one time Neil McElroy the Secretary of Defense who was the father of one of our classmates spoke and basically at commencement, he told us all that our job after graduation was to get married and have interesting sons...and we all found that hard to believe.

Even though there were three newspapers in Chicago at the time, he said 'you wouldn't want to compete with your husband," and so instead of doing what I might do now in that situation, I basically saluted and found other things to do.

The other thing that happened was that we have a tendency to project our own weaknesses onto another woman. I don't think men do that particularly.

I have certain issues. I support women candidates, but I cannot support a woman that I don't believe in. I would prefer to vote for a man who believes in choice than a woman who is pro-life. We have to be able to make distinctions and not look as though we are not feminist enough if we don't support every woman. We need to have that kind of a choice.

We must stop Saddam from ever again jeopardizing the stability and security of his neighbors with weapons of mass destruction.

We don't understand enough about the Islam religion and Muslim world.

The administration does not agree with those who suggest we should deploy hundreds of thousands of American troops to engage militarily in a ground war in Iraq.

I do consider myself a feminist. I know the word has weird implications for people now, but I do think that its important to have women involved, whether its business or public service or...anything.

I don't actually believe in a clash of civilizations. I believe in a clash of the civilized and the noncivilized.

I think that we had a different view of what the 21st century could be like, with much more of a sense, from our perspective, of trying to have an interdependent world: looking at solving regional conflicts, having strength in alliances, operating within some kind of a sense that we were part of the international community and not outside of it.

I don't think people should think of women's issues as auxiliary issues - they are central.

I went to a girls high school and I went to a women's college and when I first started teaching at Georgetown it had been a single sex school and so they wanted to have some women professors when they went co-ed, and so I originally was hired to start a program there, and really encourage women to go into foreign policy. I always have done that, and I really do think that things are better when women are involved.

When somebody is flying airplanes into buildings and killing innocent people in the name of God, it makes you question why do they have that interpretation and somebody else has another interpretation, and how many people of Muslim faith would agree with that, and what are the different aspects of different people's religions that is so divisive, rather than being unifying?

I was not at all apprehensive about ... disease ... [it] had no terrors for me. The thing I most feared in the world was hunger. That was something of which I had personal knowledge.

A great task has been completed and an even larger one remains.

Freedon succeeds from the moment people stop looking to others to improve their lives and start taking responsibility.

US is a very religious country. Separation of church and state is part of our credo, but that it is hard to understand since our money says "In God we trust" and every President says "God bless America".

So there really was a whole series of things that took the women of my generation a little bit of time to push forward.

I do think that one needs to have respect for people who are older. And I really do love the idea that one can respect generations.

I get up every morning and I'm grateful for everything that has happened. I go through my list about being grateful for my children and grandchildren, and for the really remarkable life that I have been able to have.

What distinguishes Americans from many people in the world is our kind of endemic optimism.