Madeleine Albright Quotes

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.

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

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.

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.

I was taught to strive not because there were any guarantees of success but because the act of striving is in itself the only way to keep faith with life.

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.

I'm a problem-solver.

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

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.

Well I do think, when there are more women, that the tone of the conversation changes, and also the goals of the conversation change. But it doesn't mean that the whole world would be a lot better if it were totally run by women. If you think that, you've forgotten high school.

My parents were of the generation who thought they were the children of a free Czechoslovakia, the only democracy in central Europe.

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.

What a blast it is to be here with Michael Moore.

To put it mildly, the world is a mess.

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

I did go to Wellesley, a women's college. And I am of a kind of strange generation which is transitional in terms of women who wanted to go out and get jobs.

I think that we all know what evil is. We have a sense of what's evil, and certainly killing innocent people is evil. We're less sure about what is good. There's sort of good, good enough, could be better - but absolute good is a little harder to define.

For me, America is really, truly the indispensable nation.

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.

The U.N. bureaucracy has grown to elephantine proportions. Now that the Cold War is over, we are asking that elephant to do gymnastics.

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

NATO has been a thread throughout my life.

I think that a president needs to have a variety of views presented. But also, there has to be a team effort, because otherwise, I think it creates a dissonance and difficulty.

The best book, like the best speech, will do it all - make us laugh, think, cry and cheer - preferably in that order.

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.

Because of my parents' love of democracy, we came to America after being driven twice from our home in Czechoslovakia - first by Hitler and then by Stalin.

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.

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

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

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

I can't imagine what it is like to be raised in a society where their only statues that exist are to you and your father.

Armageddon is not a foreign policy.

People are finding it harder and harder to relate to foreign policy.

History is written backwards but lived forwards.

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

As a leader, you have to have the ability to assimilate new information and understand that there might be a different view.

While democracy in the long run is the most stable form of government, in the short run, it is among the most fragile.

I wasn't a normal professor. I had worked in government. I hadn't written nine zillion books. I was a hands-on professor.

We live in an image society. Speeches are not what anybody cares about; what they care about is the picture.

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

I know that war is very cruel and that life is harder when you aren't able to live in the place you called home.

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.

Well, the thing that I learned as a diplomat is that human relations ultimately make a huge difference.

One of the things that was really an issue was I did not want to just be a woman secretary of state. I wanted to be a secretary of a state who was a woman, but not just chosen for that particular reason.

I am often asked if, when I was secretary, I had problems with foreign men. That is not who I had problems with, because I arrived in a very large plane that said United States of America. I had more problems with the men in our own government.

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".