Condoleezza Rice Quotes

The first step for a leader is to be right with yourself. Integrity is the basis of leadership.

I'm saying there is no way that I will do this, because it's really not me. I know my strengths, and governor Romney needs to find someone who wants to run with him. There are many people who will do it very, very well, and I'll support the ticket.

Every life is worthy and every life is capable of greatness. We have an obligation to make sure that opportunity for greatness is there.

Leading in a complex world means recognizing the simple things you can do to make things better.

I think it's very humble to believe that there is no man, woman or child who should live in tyranny. That people who say, well, maybe Arabs just aren't ready for democracy or maybe Africans just are going to have corrupt governments, that seems to me arrogant.

Differences can be a strength.

Ultimately, we didn't go to Germany to create a democracy. We went to overthrow Adolf Hitler. But once a democracy was there, Germany was a much bigger supporter of and help to our national interests, both economic and security than had ever been before.

As Americans we like to believe that we're loved in international politics or that people like what we're doing. But we also recognize that we have an extraordinary responsibility to do what we think is right, and that sometimes what we do is not very popular.

First, I wanted to answer the question I'm most frequently asked: "How did you become who you are?" Well, you had to know John and Angelena Rice.

If a North Korean ballistic missile can reach Alaska, it can reach Vladivostok.

I don't know anyone who is more admired and respected in the international community than President Karzai, for his strength, for his wisdom and for his courage to lead this country first in the defeat of the Taliban and now in rebuilding a democratic and unified Afghanistan. And I can tell you I am with foreign ministers and with heads of state all over the world. I sit in the councils of NATO. I sit with the EU. I sit with people all over the world and there is great admiration for your president and also for what the Afghan people are doing here.

In America, with education and hard work, it really does not matter where you came from; it matters only where you are going.

You have to have a strong sense of your values and a strong sense of who you are, because there are a lot of events and a lot of people who will pull you in this direction or that direction.

The most important lesson I think I could impart is don't let anyone determine what your horizons are going to be. You get to determine those yourself. The only limitations are whatever particular talents you happen to have and how hard you're willing to work. And if you let others define who you ought to be, or what you ought to be because they put you in a category, they see your race, they see your gender and they put you in a category. You shouldn't let that happen.

I'm a terrible long-term planner.

There's no greater challenge and there is no greater honor than to be in public service.

Now, al Qaeda's on the run. Afghanistan is no longer a base of operations. The Afghan government is a friendly government that is trying to bring democracy to its people.

You can never ask others to do something you would not do. That is integrity.

I use the word power broadly. Even more important than military and economic power is the power of ideas, the power of compassion, and the power of hope.

Tocqueville talked about "ceaseless agitation," citizens constantly use their institutions, constantly challenging them, constantly insisting upon their rights. It's also individuals taking responsibility for other individuals, recognition that no democracy works if they're weaklings.

I've found my place in life, that I'm passionate about, my talents and my passion have merged, and I'm trying to do the best that I can.

We needed to go back on the offense and offer clear leadership on Iraq.

I hope that all of us who were fortunate enough to have benefited will put our time, our resources and our efforts into making sure that kids, particularly kids without means, have a way to achieve.

Once a month I play with a chamber music quartet. I play almost no solo music anymore because I so enjoy the interaction. The members of my quartet have become some of my best friends and so I really enjoy it now in ways that I didn't before.

Sometimes people decide to write reports even though they haven't been to Guantanamo . And so I would just suggest that people look at some of the work that's been done by people who have been there. But that's not to say that we will not be very glad at the day that conditions permit the closure of Guantanamo and the trying of its inhabitants or for their release.

Great leaders never accept the world as it was and always work for the world as it should be

When are we going to stop making excuses for the terrorists and saying that somebody is making them do it? No, these are simply evil people who want to kill.

We've got to get back to a sense of an American identity, and that identity is not nationality or religion or ethnicity. It is a particular idea, and that idea is that you should live in liberty and you should be able to pursue happiness.

When you're in government, of course, you have protection and you have people who are looking out for your wellbeing, but you can't live in a state of fear. If you do, you're not going to do your job very well and you're going to give yourself high blood pressure, which probably isn't worth it.

I play classical music almost exclusively. I never mastered jazz or gospel in the way that my mother did. She was a fine improvisational musician. I pretty much have to stick to what's written on the page.

Every life is capable of greatness.

...if you are overdressed, it is a comment on them. If you are under dressed, it is a comment on you.

When I went off to college, I was expecting to be a concert musician. In music school I heard all of these kids who were just unbelievable. And I understand that you can be very, very good, but there's something that separates very, very good from great, and I knew that I wasn't great.

I find that the great majority of public servants across the entire political spectrum come because they believe in the United States and they want to change the world.

People may oppose you, but when they realize you can hurt them, they'll join your side.

I don't think anybody could have predicted that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile.

I didn't run for student council president. I don't see myself in any way in elected office. I love policy. I'm not particularly fond of politics.

The quicker we get about the business of reducing our reliance on oil the better.

I'm actually genuinely optimistic about the United States and what's possible in the United States. And when you're out here, you see Americans across racial and economic and socioeconomic lines working together. And you maybe get a little bit less cynical than when you sit in the seat of kind of the epicenter of it all.

I remember at the time of 9/11 that there were women who went out of their way to escort Muslim women to grocery stores because they wanted to be sure that they didn't experience any prejudice. And so I'm not one who believes that America is a country that's intolerant. It's the most tolerant country in the world, and I really think that it's unfortunate that a number of people are trying to paint America with this brush. I just don't see it.

We are at war, and our security as a nation depends on winning that war.

My Fox guys, I love every single one of them.

Today's headlines and history's judgment are rarely the same. If you are too attentive to the former, you will most certainly not do the hard work of securing the latter.

It was really wonderful playing with Aretha [ Franklin]. I knew that she knew what she was doing, so all I had to do was sit in the background and vamp a little bit.

After all, when the world looks to America, they look to us because we are the most successful political and economic experiment in human history.

We're in the middle of the transformation of a society that has handled its politics through repression to a society that will handle its politics through democratic institutions.

I will never forget the bright September day, standing at my desk in the White House, when my young assistant said that a plane had hit the World Trade Center - and then a second one - and a third, the Pentagon.

It has been hard to muster the resources to support fledgling democracies and to intervene on behalf of the most desperate. The AIDS orphans in Uganda, the refugee fleeing Zimbabwe, the young woman who has been trafficked into the sex trade in Southeast Asia. It has been hard, yet this assistance together with the compassionate work of private charities, people of conscience and people of faith, has shown the soul of our country.