Madeleine K. Albright Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy the top 21 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Madeleine K. Albright.
Famous Quotes By Madeleine K. Albright
Returning to Washington,FDR declared that Yalta Conference had put and end to the kind of balance-of-power divisions that had long marred global politics. His assessment echoed Woodrow Wilson's idealistic and equally inaccurate claims at the end of World War I. In London, Churchill told his cabinet that "poor Chamberlain believed he could trust Hitler. He was wrong. But I don't think I'm wrong about Stalin." Soviet-British friendship, Churchill maintained, "would continue as long as Stalin was in charge. — Madeleine K. Albright
The more extreme advocates from one side helped to validate the arguments of extremists on the other — Madeleine K. Albright
People everywhere, including the United States, are still prone to accept stereotypes, eager to believe what we want to believe (for example, on global warming) and anxious to await while others take the lead
seeking in vain to avoid both responsibility and risk. When trouble arises among faraway people, we remain tempted to hide behind the principle of national sovereignty, to "mind our own business" when it is convenient, and to think of democracy as a suit to be worn in fine weather but left in the closet when clouds threaten. — Madeleine K. Albright
I also think it is important for women to help one another. I have a saying: There is a special place in hell for women who don't. — Madeleine K. Albright
In A Man With a Pipe, my brother observed that although my father had been seen as intellectual and my mother more a creature of temperament, she had often been the more levelheaded of the two. In sum, we miss them as we love them, equally and always. — Madeleine K. Albright
The Nazis' entrance upon the European stage did not, at first, alarm the British. After all, under the Versailles treaty,the size of the German army and navy was limited and the defeated country was forbidden to maintain air force. The wake-up bell began sounding only when, in March 1935, Hitler renounced the treaty and declared that his country would indeed rebuild its military. The following year, when Germany reoccupied the Rhineland, Britons were unsettled to learn that his army was already three times the legal size ad that his air force, or Luftwaffe, would surpass their own. — Madeleine K. Albright
There is a special place in hell for women who don't help other women.
(Keynote speech at Celebrating Inspiration luncheon with the WNBA's All-Decade Team, 2006) — Madeleine K. Albright
If intelligence were a television set, it would be an early black-and-white model with poor reception, so that much of the picture was gray and the figures on the screen were snowy and indistinct. You could fiddle wiht the knobs all you wanted, but unless you were careful, what you would see often depended more on what you expacted or hoped to see than on what was really there. — Madeleine K. Albright
When, in May, tensions reached a high point, London warned Berlin that if it attacked Czechoslovakia and the French were embroiled as well, "His Majesty's Government could not guarantee that they would not be forced by circumstances to become involved also". Ar the same time, English officials were telling their counterparts in Paris that they were "not disinterested" in Czechoslovakia's fate. I learned in the course of my own career that British diplomats are trained to write in with precision; so when a double negative is employed, the intent, usually, is not to clarify an issue but to surround it with fog. — Madeleine K. Albright
Disgusting Serbs, get out! — Madeleine K. Albright
What fascinates me - and what serves as a central theme of this book - is why we make the choices we do. What separates us from the world we have and the kind of ethical universe envisioned by someone like Havel? What prompts one person to act boldly in a moment of crisis and a second to seek shelter in the crowd? Why do some people become stronger in the face of adversity while others quickly lose heart? What separates the bully from the protector? Is it education, spiritual belief, our parents, our friends, the circumstances of our birth, traumatic events, or more likely some combination that spells the difference? More succinctly, do our hopes for the future hinge on a desirable unfolding of external events or some mysterious process within? — Madeleine K. Albright
History would be far different
if we did not tend to hear God
most clearly when we think
He is telling us
exactly what it is
we want to hear — Madeleine K. Albright
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. — Madeleine K. Albright
I wonder," wrote Eleanor Roosevelt, "whether we have decided to hide behind neutrality? It is safe, perhaps, but I am not always sure it is right to be safe. . . Every time a nation which has known freedom loses it, other free nations lose something, too. — Madeleine K. Albright
The main thing is to remain oneself, under any circumstances; that was and is our common purpose. — Madeleine K. Albright
If diplomacy is the art of persuading others to act as we would wish, effective foreign policy requires that we comprehend why others act as they do — Madeleine K. Albright
The voice and force of the United States may count for nothing if they are withheld too long. — Madeleine K. Albright
I have spent a lifetime looking for remedies to all manner of life's problems
personal, social, political, global. I am deeply suspicious of those who offer simple solutions and statements of absolute certainty or who claim full possession of the truth. Yet I have grown equally skeptical of those who suggest that all is too nuanced and complex for us to learn any lessons, that there are so many sides to every thing that we can pursue knowledge every day of our lives and still know nothing for sure. I believe we can recognize truth when we see it, just not a first and not without ever relenting in our efforts to learn more. This is because the goal we seek, and the good we hope for, comes not as some final reward but as the hidden companion to our quest. It is not what we find, but the reason we cannot stop looking and striving, that tells us why we are here. — Madeleine K. Albright
There is a significant moral difference between a person who commits a violent crime and a person who tries to cross a border illegally in order to put food on the family table. Such migrants may violate our laws against illicit entry, but if that's all they do they are trespassers, not criminals. They deserve to have their dignity respected. — Madeleine K. Albright