Madeleine Albright Quotes
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I do consider myself a feminist. I know the word has weird implications for people now, but I do think that its important to have women involved, whether its business or public service or...anything.
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I have been in meetings where a head of state will say, 'I like your tie,' to a man... or, 'I like your country because the weather's good,' or whatever. So for me, the pins in some ways were openers.
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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.
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I think women are really good at making friends and not good at networking. Men are good at networking and not necessarily making friends. That's a gross generalization, but I think it holds in many ways.
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Really, I have to laugh because there was a whole set of stories that made me sound like the Dragon Lady, you know, 'tough this and tough that.' Then there is this business about 'gooey.' The bottom line is I am a pragmatic idealist.
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You think that the heads of state only have serious conversations, but they actually often begin really with the weather or, 'I really like your tie.'
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Hate, emotionalism, and frustration are not policies.
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One of the things I write about a bit in my Madam Secretary memoir is on Rwanda, where I was an instructed ambassador at the U.N., and my instructions were to not vote for increased forces there, and I didn't like my instructions. So I got up and called Washington and said, "Change my instructions," and they didn't.
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Even before I went to the UN, I often would want to say something in a meeting - only woman at the table - and I'd think, 'OK well, I don't think I'll say that. It may sound stupid.' And then some man says it, and everybody thinks it's completely brilliant, and you are so mad at yourself for not saying something.
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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".
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Life is grim, and we don't have to be grim all the time.
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I loved what I did. I could've been secretary of state for ever.
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My mind-set is Munich. Most of my generation's is Vietnam.
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Our strategic dialogue with China can both protect American interests and uphold our principles, provided we are honest about our differences on human rights and other issues and provided we use a mix of targeted incentives and sanctions to narrow these differences.
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Most of the time I spend when I get up in the morning is trying to figure out what is going to happen.
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I hope I'm wrong, but I am afraid that Iraq is going to turn out to be the greatest disaster in American foreign policy - worse than Vietnam, not in the number who died, but in terms of its unintended consequences and its reverberation throughout the region.
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A lot of people think international relations is like a game of chess. But it's not a game of chess, where people sit quietly, thinking out their strategy, taking their time between moves. It's more like a game of billiards, with a bunch of balls clustered together.
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I really think that there was a great advantage in many ways to being a woman. I think we are a lot better at personal relationships, and then have the capability obviously of telling it like it is when it's necessary.
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Our predecessors understood that the ties that bind America are far stronger than disagreements over any particular policy and far more durable and profound than any party affiliation.
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The stunning part was that one time Neil McElroy the Secretary of Defense who was the father of one of our classmates spoke and basically at commencement, he told us all that our job after graduation was to get married and have interesting sons...and we all found that hard to believe.
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We live in an image society. Speeches are not what anybody cares about; what they care about is the picture.
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So people are talking about revolution. What a revolution it would be to have a woman president.
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Hussein has chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies.
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Maybe if everybody in leadership was a woman, you might not get into the conflicts in the first place. But if you watch the women who have made it to the top, they haven't exactly been non-aggressive - including me.