Samantha Power famous quotes

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

#Silence #Neutrality #Acquiescence

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

#Wisdom #Spring #Human Nature

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

#Way #Needs #Palestinian

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.
-- Samantha Power

#Evil #Stories #Genocide

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.
-- Samantha Power

#School #Support #Textbooks

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.
-- Samantha Power

#Ears #Concentration #Surgeons

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

#Military #Government #Police

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

#Technology #Accountability #Innovation

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

#Rights #Presidential #Political

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

#Way

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

#Missing #Constitution

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

#Hypocrite #Rights #Historical

Foreign policy is an explicitly amoral enterprise.
-- Samantha Power

#Foreign Policy #Enterprise #Policy

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

#Mean #Iran #Guarantees

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.
-- Samantha Power

#Country #War #Leader

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

#Country #Believe #United States

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

#Country #Rights #Government

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.
-- Samantha Power

#Keys #Giving #Reform

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.
-- Samantha Power

#Summer #War #Israel

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

#Country #Altruism

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

#People #Affair #Public Service

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

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

#Thinking #Law #United States

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

#Order #Long #Justice

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

#Catalyst #Terrorist #Standing

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

#Heart #Issues #Broken

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

#Thinking #Long #Political

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.
-- Samantha Power

#Thinking #People #Get Better

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

#Military #Feelings #Lasts

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

#President #Needs #Faces

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

#President #Reputation #Republican

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

#Government #Years #Police

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

#Law #Investing #Investment

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

#Atrocities #Tools #Mass

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.
-- Samantha Power

#Military #Als #Election

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.
-- Samantha Power

#War #Vietnam #Realizing

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.
-- Samantha Power

#Mean #Dreamer #Trying

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

#Fighting #Violence #Criminals

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

#Government #Want #Protection

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

#Morning #News #Easy

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
-- Samantha Power

#Israel #People #Citizens