Samantha Power Quotes

I joke that I spent 38 years scouring the globe, going to war zones, trying to find the person with my exact birthday.

Success is not about who never fails. It is about who can spring - or even stagger - back up.

As even a democracy like the United States has shown, waging war can benefit a leader in several ways: it can rally citizens around the flag, it can distract them from bleak economic times, and it can enrich a country's elites.

Without investing in the rule of law for the poor, none of the other investments we make will be sustainable.

I tell young people: If you make a job choice on the basis of something other than your nose or your gut, it's unlikely to work out.... It's perilous to look ahead and be like, "I'd like to be ambassador." I would never have gone to Bosnia or spent years writing about genocide. Do it on the basis of what you can learn.... It's like falling in love. Your whole dating life, you're thinking, On the one hand, on the other hand. Then you meet the right guy, and you're not in list-making mode; you're just with the person you're supposed to be with. Jobs are like that too.

I got into journalism not to be a journalist but to try to change American foreign policy. I'm a corny person. I was a dreamer predating my journalistic life, so I got into journalism as a means to try to change the world.

In general, my rule is find out where your heart is, then speak from the heart. People know the difference between that and something scripted.

Countries that intervene militarily rarely do so out of pure altruism.

My kids are my salvation.... It's a delight to walk in and get charged by a five-year-old and a two-year-old. That'll make you forget the darkness.

I like to think that as I get older I'm getting better at spending time with people who have qualities that make them worth spending time with.

Brokenness is the operative issue of our time - broken souls, broken hearts, broken places.

I get to be married to the liveliest mind I've ever encountered.... I hit the jackpot.

We know that often holding those who have carried out mass atrocities accountable is at times our best tool to prevent future atrocities.

First, recognize the mistake. The main thing is taking responsibility and being authentic.

I was working in the same building as U.S. News & World Report, and I banged on the door and said, "I'm ready to go." And they said, "What's your combat experience?" I said, "Does my parents' divorce count? It was pretty rough." Then they said, "What's your reporting experience?" And I said, "I covered the women's volleyball team in college exceptionally well." The guy was like, "You are so not ready to be a war correspondent."

My favorite things in life are my children. If somebody wants to understand me, there's no better window into that than my children.

Being an occupier is not good for anybody's global standing. It is a catalyst for terrorist recruitment.

From Richard Holbrooke - and I miss him every day - I learned two things. One, prioritization: Never take your eye off the longer-term reforms. The other thing is, he was a hell of a schmoozer! So I should take advantage of my Irish love of beer and gift of the gab, and build relationships. That's a cherished part of the job, asking someone, "How did you get to be the Rwandan ambassador?" I try to take advantage of the fact that I hope to be here at least until the president's term ends getting to know my colleagues.

Re-examining our reasoning is not something that has come naturally to American statesmen.

India is at the vanguard of figuring out how to exploit technology and innovation on behalf of democratic accountability.

When I wake up in the morning, I think about Syria.

You could be in the United Nations office all night every night and still feel like you were not making a sufficient dent in the world's problems. I think the key is prioritization. But every job presents the tyranny of the inbox, of allowing the urgent to crowd out the important. So we have to have our lodestars.

When dictators feel their support slipping among adults, it is not unusual for them to alter school textbooks in the hope of enlisting impressionable youths in their cause.

I think the point that we all agree upon is that we have to engage with Russia.

What is most needed in Darfur is an international peacekeeping and protection presence, and this is what the Sudanese government most wants to avoid.

The U.S. government engages with many countries around the world in official dialogues on human rights.

Over the years, Western governments have been criticized for working with foreign police who have proved abusive or corrupt.

Silence in the face of atrocity is not neutrality; silence in the face of atrocity is acquiescence.

My basic feeling about military intervention is that it should be a last resort, undertaken only to stave off large-scale bloodshed.

As a journalist, I've felt as if it's a privilege that people share their stories and want you to be the messenger.... Even in my current job, when I go abroad, I'm racing to get back to the president and the secretary to share what I've seen.

I think that the only time we will really know what then-President Trump is going to do about the set of challenges that confront him is after he has sat down with his advisers as the commander in chief, when he's looking at the threats and the intelligence from the standpoint of being the number one decider, when he's hearing from his secretary of defense, his chairman, who was the same chairman President Obama had, Chairman Joe Dunford, who is an outstanding public servant, who has led our anti-ISIL effort, on which we're making great progress.

My second epiphany came as an intern at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The man I worked for was consumed with what was going on in Bosnia. And the more I knew [about it] the more saddened I was. There were these images of emaciated men behind barbed wire.... It was like, I've got to find a way to do something.

If you represent everyone, in some ways you represent no one. You're un-owned.

You've got to deploy serious political assets around a plan [in Darfur]. And the George W.] Bush administration has never had a plan. Ever. The Europeans don't want to do anything, saying, "The Americans are in charge of that." And in fact the Americans are in charge of naming it and bringing these resolutions every few weeks to the Security Council.

I think about Syria when I go to bed at night.

There is a fair amount of competition, obviously, with ISIL and the terrorist networks around the world, China also posing a different kind of threat to the rules-based order.

We need to deter the Palestinians in any way we can.

'Acting as if...' I decided, ridiculously in retrospect, that my experience covering women's volleyball for my college newspaper was sufficient for me to at least try to become a war correspondent.

When I wake up in the middle of the night when I hear one of my kids coughing or crying, I think about Syria.

When it came to the Vietnam War, Mr. McNamara was an early advocate of escalation but came to realize the flaws in the American approach earlier than many of his colleagues. Yet in public, he continued to defend the war.

I think we do have an interest in combating states that try to cross borders and steal parts of other people's country.

We need to find means for cooperation.

The key to U.N. reform is giving Americans a clearer picture of what the U.N. is and what it isn't, what it can be and what it can't be.

Every working mother struggles with the BlackBerry, knowing the boss can call.

We, as Americans, have an interest in ensuring that the only people who get to vote for our elected leaders are our citizens, and not some foreign people who think that they have an interest in skewing our election in one direction or another.

International institutions are composed of governments. Governments control their own military forces and police.

American decision-makers must understand how damaging a foreign policy that privileges order and profit over justice really is in the long term.

I think Obama is right when he talks about the rule of law as a cornerstone of what the United States should stand for.