Madeleine Albright Quotes - Page 6

Hate, emotionalism, and frustration are not policies.

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.

For somebody who loves foreign policy, being Secretary is the best job in the world - but it doesn't happen twice.

I loved what I did. I could've been secretary of state for ever.

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 was a little girl in World War II and I'm used to being freed by Americans.

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.

Hussein has chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies.

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'.

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

I think women are really good at making friends and not good at networking. Men are good at networking and not necessarily making friends. That's a gross generalization, but I think it holds in many ways.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

[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.

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

I hope I'm wrong, but I am afraid that Iraq is going to turn out to be the greatest disaster in American foreign policy - worse than Vietnam, not in the number who died, but in terms of its unintended consequences and its reverberation throughout the region.

The day-to-day making of policy is arguing all the time. You're trying to get the right approach and the right answer, and there are moments that aren't very pleasant. But in the end, you look at the overall product.

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.

I have to tell you, my seven-year-old granddaughter said to my daughter, her mother, 'So what's the big deal about Grandma Maddy having been Secretary of State? Only girls are Secretaries of State.' Most of her lifetime, it's true. But at the time it really was a big deal.

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].

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