Samantha power quotes

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

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.

We need to find means for cooperation.

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

There is a convergence of crises that makes it challenging to keep the world's attention.

One of the things that a president needs in the face of genocide is resolve.

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.

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

I was interning in the CBS sports affiliate in Atlanta with Robin Roberts.... I was taking notes on a Braves-Padres game, and on the live feed came footage of these kids protesting and getting crushed during the Tiananmen Square uprising in China in 1989. In that moment I became like a lot of young people in this country today, horrified and inspired but confused as to what I might do.

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.

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

No more than a surgeon can operate while tweeting can you reach your potential with one ear in, one ear out. You actually have to reacquaint yourself with concentration. We all do.

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

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 happen to miss the Constitution; I thought it was a good document.

In the '90s, there was scant presidential leadership and insufficient domestic political mobilization for foreign policy grounded in human rights.

Foreign policy is an explicitly amoral enterprise.

President Reagan, of course, did more than any other person to entrench the Republican reputation for toughness on national security.

Historical hypocrites have themselves carried out the very human rights abuses that they suddenly decide warrant intervention elsewhere.

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

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

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.

In the 2000 election, George W. Bush, who had shirked military service, succeeded in presenting himself as more reliable on national security than Al Gore.

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.

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

We have an interest in combating tactics in war that are abhorrent and that only fuel terrorism because they incite people on the ground.

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

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."

Since 9/11, there has been a huge leap in people wanting to get personally involved in public service and international affairs.

The story of U.S. policy during the genocide in Rwanda is not a story of willful complicity with evil. U.S. officials did not sit around and conspire to allow genocide to happen.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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 about Syria when I go to bed at night.

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

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

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

Democracies are expense-averse and they think in terms of short-term, political interests rather than a long-term interest in stability.

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

There's something beautiful about working in the one place in the world where the world is present, like United Nations. Otherwise, one would have to go to each of these countries to negotiate.

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

It is easy to get used to the morning news, habituated. But don't. The morning news is yours to alter.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Another longstanding foreign policy flaw is the degree to which special interests dictate the way in which the "national interest" as a whole is defined and pursued.... America's important historic relationship with Israel has often led foreign policy decision-makers to defer reflexively to Israeli security assessments, and to replicate Israeli tactics, which, as the war in Lebanon last summer demonstrated, can turn out to be counter-productive.

'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.

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.

I'm going to Washington on a fateful, even historic, mission. I feel that I am an emissary of all Israel's citizens, even those who do not agree with me, and of the entire Jewish people

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

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

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

Engaging Iran won't guarantee improved U.S.-Iranian relations or a more stable Gulf region. But not engaging means more of the same.

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

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

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

Violence against women isn't cultural, it's criminal. Equality cannot come eventually, it's something we must fight for now.

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

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 believe the United States is the greatest country on Earth. I really do.