Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Just as the Russians and the Soviets didn't manage to wipe out languages in Lithuania, neither have they managed to wipe out religion to the extent that we had feared.
Be who you are. If you spend all of your time worrying about how people view you, you will not be either faithful to yourself or effective in what you're trying to do.
I like to think that with me, what you see is what you get, and you can like or dislike it, it's up to you, but it's straight. That's something that I pride myself on.
I've taken my knocks here and there, but I believe my intentions are good. Doesn't mean everything I do is perfectly executed or I don't make mistakes. Of course I do.
No idea holds greater sway in the minds of educated Americans that the belief that it is possible to democratize governments anytime and anywhere under any circumstances.
Neither nature, experience, nor probability informs these lists of 'entitlements', which are subject to no constraints except those of the mind and appetite of their authors.
Progress is the product of human agency. Things get better because we make them better. Things go wrong when we get too comfortable, when we fail to take risks or seize opportunities.
There is not an inherent contradiction between a Ukraine that has longstanding historic and cultural ties to Russia, and a modern Ukraine that wants to integrate more closely with Europe.
I think people have confidence that I will fairly and accurately represent their point of view to the President, and that I'm not going to put a spin on it, even if I may disagree with it.
Decades, if not centuries are normally required for people to acquire the necessary disciplines and habits. In Britain, the road [to democratic government] took seven centuries to traverse.
Cross cultural experience teaches us not simply that people have different beliefs, but that people seek meaning and understand themselves in some sense as members of a cosmos ruled by God.
Iran's arms exports to the murderous Assad regime in Syria are of particular concern. As the Panel of Experts has concluded, Syria is now the central party to illicit Iranian arms transfers.
Peace, prosperity, and democracy cannot endure if imposed from the outside. We should cease to make false distinctions between peacekeeping and prevention; they are in fact inextricably linked.
When the Soviet Union walked out of arms control negotiations, and refused even to discuss the issues, the San Francisco Democrats didn't blame Soviet intransigence. They blamed the United States.
The United States of America is the leading power in the world. Our friends and our adversaries respect us in large measure because they know that we are steady. We are fact-based. We are serious.
I was a woman in a man's world. I was a Democrat in a Republican administration. I was an intellectual in a world of bureaucrats. I talked differently. This may have made me a bit like an ink blot.
We must be honest in acknowledging that neither Germany nor the US has the luxury of assuming that we can skate by on half-measures in Afghanistan and Pakistan and not risk suffering the consequences.
There are no cookie-cutter solutions that you can apply from one circumstance to another. They're different. Our interests, as implicated, are different. The tools we have at our disposal are different.
We must be honest in acknowledging that neither Germany nor the U.S. has the luxury of assuming that we can skate by on half-measures in Afghanistan and Pakistan and not risk suffering the consequences.
And I think detente had manifestly failed, and that the pursuit of it was encouraging Soviet expansion and rendering the world more dangerous, and especially rendering the Western world in greater peril.
I do leisure reading but I don't get to do it like, at one in the morning. When I getting up at six in the morning, so I do most of my leisure reading on vacation and on airplanes and that sort of stuff.
I think that it's always appropriate for Americans and for American foreign policy to make clear why we feel that self-government is most compatible with peace, the well-being of people, and human dignity
Thirty years ago, about 80% of a company's assets resided in its plant and equipment, with 20% in the knowledge of its people. Today, the reverse is true. The knowledge of our staff is our principal asset
I think one of the real issues that we're faced with is how we consume news, how the media is perceived, how fake news is gaining a degree of currency without criticism that is dangerous, in my judgement.
I think that it's always appropriate for Americans and for American foreign policy to make clear why we feel that self-government is most compatible with peace, the well-being of people, and human dignity.
The youth thing never really, from my vantage point, slowed me down. I think the harder audience for me to gain acceptance from was the career diplomatic corps that worked with and for me in the Africa Bureau.
We have some straight journalism, but then we have opinion and perspective. And I think a lot of people, especially young people, don't know how to tell the difference, and aren't motivated to tell the difference.
As Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Barak have repeatedly said, the intelligence and security relationship between the United States and Israel at present is unprecedented. It has never been stronger.
In the years just before... during the Carter years, the Soviets regularly violated, if you will, both the spirit and theletter of arms control agreements, I think, that they had negotiated during the period of detente.
When the San Francisco Democrats treat foreign affairs as an afterthought, as they did, they behaved less like a dove or a hawk than like an ostrich - convinced it could shut out the world by hiding its head in the sand.
It's not the day in which I grew up, long time ago, where we had three news networks. No cable, no social media, no internet. Where what you see is what you got. We had basically straight journalism. We don't have that anymore.
The notion that -- which some people are trying to suggest, that by asking for the identity of an American person, that is the same as leaking it, is completely false. There's no equivalence between so-called unmasking and leaking.
I'm a political scientist and I study these things, and I know that economic problems, with the rising unemployment and inflation and low productivity and so forth, were a factor in that election, in that defeat of President Carter.
The real point is that totalitarian regimes have claimed jurisdiction over the whole person, and the whole society, and they don't at all believe that we should give unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God's.
There was a hateful video that was disseminated on the internet. It had nothing to do with the United States government and it's one that we find disgusting and reprehensible. It's been offensive to many, many people around the world.
When Marxist dictators shoot their way into power in Central America, the Democrats don't blame the guerrillas and their Soviet allies, they blame United States' policies of one hundred years ago, but then they always blame America first.
I believe that detente was having almost the opposite effect of what was intended. What was intended was to sort of end the contest for power and to stop Soviet expansion, especially by military means and the military build-up, the military contest
I believe that detente was having almost the opposite effect of what was intended. What was intended was to sort of end the contest for power and to stop Soviet expansion, especially by military means and the military build-up, the military contest.
Our bottom line, if you want to call it a red line, president's bottom line has been that Iran will not acquire a nuclear weapon and we will take no option off the table to ensure that it does not acquire a nuclear weapon, including the military option.
We also have begun to assess with the Ukrainians the scope of their larger security assistance requirements. We have had teams out making that assessment with the Ukrainians. And we have already provided various forms of equipment and support to Ukraine.
I think that Ronald Reagan wanted to hear other people's views, and he always listened carefully, and from time to time he changed his own mind about a position. And especially he took pains to listen carefully to foreign leaders with whom he was dealing.
That is simply that Marxism has been tremendously fashionable in our time, so it has infected a very large number of major institutions in many countries of the world. So I suppose that we shouldn't be too surprised that it should infect the church as well.
One of the things I love about negotiations is that you have to be able to play it like an orchestra, different instruments for different circumstances. There's sweetness, and encouragement, and cajoling. There's pressure, there's drama, there's ultimatums.
It is manifestly in the interest of the United States to deal with the very real threat that climate change poses. And that's why President Obama has worked so hard to reduce our own emissions and to lead internationally in forging the Paris climate agreement.
Vietnam presumably taught us that the United States could not serve as the world's policeman; it should also have taught us the dangers of trying to be the world's midwife to democracy when the birth is scheduled to take place under conditions of guerrilla war.
I think it's very, very important that in foreign policy and national security decision making, as in any other realm, that there be a range of diversity that reflects the full complexity of America. We should draw on those experiences to inform our decision making.
I'm apologetic when I feel like I've made a mistake. And when I have done a disservice to myself or someone else. But I don't feel a need to apologize for doing or saying something that I think needs to be said, just because it may not sit comfortably with somebody else.
We're well aware, and we have been for a long time, that there is a real threat from adversaries, state actors, non-state actors, to hack us, influence us, destroy stuff through cyber means. Because cyber threat has been understood for a while, it's longstanding, it's a concern.
Well, I think by any expectation South Africa has come a tremendously long way. We've seen a society that many people thought couldn't withstand a peaceful transition to democracy without a great deal of violence, in fact, make that transition and do it in relative peace and security.
I am straight forward; I am not manipulative; I am not two-faced. And I think that that has served me well in all of my roles, particularly as a diplomat, because people knew if I said something, I meant it. If I said no, I meant no, and if I said we could make this work, we would make it work.