Condoleezza Rice Quotes

Today's headlines and history's judgments 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.

The tendency of journalists to take a kernel and turn it into a full-blown scoop is one that I came to know well - and suffer from - throughout my eight years in Washington.

One of he hardest things about diplomacy is to put yourself into someone else's shoes without compromising your own principles.

This tendency of authoritarian regimes to use manufactured "public opinion" is one of the most dangerous aspects of such regimes. In a democracy you don't have to create a public voice; citizens do that without prodding.

One problem in managing a crisis in today's media environment is that you are forced to say something each day. If you are not careful, your rhetoric escalates little by little and you create demands that must be met by the other side. Since the other side is doing the same thing, it's easy to have the crisis spin out of control pretty quickly.

You can't condemn Al Qaeda and hug Hamas.

Intelligence failures usually come from UNDERESTIMATING the maturity of such programs. (Programs for building weapons of mass destruction.)

There is a mismatch between authority and responsibility that is an everyday challenge at the NSA.

Yet with all the technological possibilities of phone and video, diplomacy is best practiced in person.

East Asia was also the region with the most assertive Pentagon profile. The combatant commander for the Pacific was always something of a proconsul, a four-star admiral operating from his base in Hawaii and prone to pronouncement on matters that at best blurred the boundaries between diplomacy and military policy and at worst shattered them. And it didn't matter who held the post; it seemed to be a permanent feature of the command.

I saw Turkey as the frontline state in the historic struggle to reconcile the principles of Islam and the demands of individual liberty. That struggle is still playing out in the Middle East today. If there is to be democracy in the region, it will likely evolve as it as in Turkey. As in that country, there will have to be a resolution of the tension between individual rights, including the rights of women, and the tenets of Islam. The place of religion and religious people in politics, resolved in Europe hundreds of years ago, will have to be determined anew in the Muslim world. Thus the struggle in Istanbul and Ankara and throughout the vast country is of monumental historic significance.

One million dollars here, one million dollars there, pretty soon it's serious money.

The budget is the statement of priorities, not just a collection of numbers.

That was always the true divide in Russia: Slavophiles versus modernizers, not democrats versus authoritarians.

In this dense, urban, complex fighting environment, our heavy military firepower in pursuit of insurgents and terrorists often ended up inadvertently alienating the population even further. US soldiers raided towns and villages in search of enemies and often returned to the safety of their bases. The average Iraqi was left to deal with the consequences of those actions. The population had to believe that our forces had the capability and the will to protect them.

In warfare of this kind, a population that is passive toward or intimidated by the terrorists enables their success. Wen you cannot separate friend from foe, it is hard to win....

Either militaries adapt on the battlefield or they die.

To clear areas from insurgent control, to hold them securely, and to build durable national...institutions...are very descriptive of the tenets of counterinsurgency doctrine.

The most dramatic cases of injustice toward women related ... to those caught up in conflict and war. ... rape (is) used as a weapon of war; it (is) not just a consequence of it. It is the deliberate strategy to humiliate adversaries who cannot protect their women from degradation.

History is a long arc and it bends towards justice.

(There are) several perennials of diplomacy relating to events offstage that take enormous effort and are rarely reported. First, the lobbying for international diplomatic positions is intense, with countries putting forth candidates who then organize sophisticated campaigns. The United States has to be careful to throw its weight at the right time: too soon, and the person is branded as "Washington's guy;" too late, and the logrolling might bring someone to office who is unacceptable. Second, other countries appreciate a US approach to these elections that isn't heavy-handed....Third, the gratitude doesn't last very long.

In the Chinese character "wei ji," "Wei" means "danger" and "ji," "opportunity." Together they form the Chinese word for "crisis."

I can assure you that America has no permanent enemies...because we have no permanent hatreds.

As the Cold War's darkest days fade from memory, what once seemed impossible now seems to have been inevitable. In reality, the peaceful resolution of the Cold War was the product of the farsighted decisions made at a time of great uncertainty. After World War II, the United States and its allies set out a vision and built institutions to guide us through the "long-twilight struggle" to victory. The foundation of that strategy was an unyielding trust in the ability of free nations to outperform and then to outlast those that denied their people freedom.

Although it faced a number of regional security challenges, Asia lacked (lacks) robust institutions to deal with them....The Pacific Rim was (is) a web of bilateral - and mostly bad - relationships....All bore the unhealed wounds of World War II.

International institutions are like the rings of a tree - you can date their birth by looking at their membership.

The nature of poverty in the developing world is different than it is in pockets of of the developed world; I always noticed in particular that the children weren't playing....the children were just standing around. It was as if the seriousness of their surroundings - the poverty and violence - had robbed them of their youth.

If you want to do something about overpopulation, educate women and they will be less likely to have their first child at twelve or give birth to ten offspring. If you want to do something about human trafficking, educate women and they will be less likely to end up in brothels in Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, and - yes - even the United States. If you want to do something about poverty, give women a microloan and they can build small enterprises in their villages that will employ people and spread prosperity. Societies that treat women badly are dangerous societies. The empowerment of women is not only morally right, it is also practical in the positive impact it has on many social ills.

The Lord is going to come on time - if we just wait.

Counterinsurgencies...require civilian support to succeed....Winning the support of the local population require(s) economic assistance, reconstruction, and good governance.

The strategic value of Afghanistan (lies) in its geography. There (is) a reason it (has) always been an object of the great powers' attention in what had historically been known as the "Great Game." Sitting above Pakistan and India to the South, Central Asian states to the north, and Iran to the west, a stable and democratic Afghanistan (has) the potential to transform the entire region. It would not happen quickly, but if it were ever to happen, the first step was to redefine the territorial confines of South Asia. That meant that the Central Asian states of Kyrgystan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan had to be thought of as relating to South Asia, not Europe.

Historically, it can be demonstrated that democracies have not fought one another. Therefore democracy and stability - both within states and between them - can be mutually reinforcing.

It's much easier as secretary of state to drive the agenda when you're abroad. When you are in Washington, you're competing with latest headlines; when you're overseas, you have a press corps eager to report on your every meeting. Usually you have a time change working in your favor so that you're not making news in the middle of the cycle, and you have compelling visuals that help emphasize policies. Being on the road is a good thing for the secretary of state.

Our (European) allies can be frustrating and patronizing, treating the United States as a bigger and stronger but less refined and less cultured younger brother., who needs to be reined in from time to time. But with all the challenges, we need Europe, with its considerable wealth and values, to achieve a freer, more prosperous world. The close ties of kinship have been diluted somewhat by the United States' multiethnic character, but the great ideals of the Enlightenment and the principles on which we were founded remain and tie us to Europe as to no other place. And the alliance of Europe and the United States has been the most stable and successful free association of states in international history. Together we stood fast until the Soviet behemoth collapsed, and Europe is now whole, free, and at peace. That bodes well for what a united alliance can do in the future.

Relations between the major players were contentious with many unresolved issues from World War II....East Asia was a thicket of bad bilateral relations. The United States was struggling to maintain good relations with each of the powers and often found itself caught up in the hostility of a region that had not yet put World War II behind it.