Madeleine Albright Quotes

A man who's never seen war is like a woman who's never given birth - soft in the head.

I didn't know a time when there wasn't a war because I spent all my time from the age of two or three to eight in a coal cellar really.

I don't think I'd call myself a war writer, but I would probably say I'm a writer who has written about war.

I would like my book to give people insight to the war before and after, but I don't think anyone could read my book and suddenly make up her mind about the war. I want to write for everybody.

I know what war's like. I know what scene's like.

Then came the war, old sport. It was a great relief, and I tried very hard to die, but I seemed to bear an enchanted life.

Like so many of our people, we have now had a personal experience of German barbarity which only strengthens the resolution of all of us to fight through to final victory.

It may sound funny, but I love the South. I don't choose to live anywhere else. There's land here, where a man can raise cattle, and I'm going to do it some day. There are lakes where a man can sink a hook and fight the bass. There is room here for my children to play and grow, and become good citizens-if the white man will let them.

Of course, everyone's parents are embarrassing. It goes with the territory. The nature of parents is to embarrass merely by existing, just as it is the nature of children of a certain age to cringe with embarrassment, shame, and mortification should their parents so much as speak to them on the street.

Looking after children can be a subtle way of giving up... They become the whole ones, the well ones, the postponement of happiness, the ones who won't drink too much, give up, get divorced, become mentally ill. The part of oneself that's fighting against decay and depression is transferred to guarding them from decay and depression. In the meantime one decays and gets depressed.

There are no other factors that cause me stress when I get inside the Octagon. I guess that's an advantage of getting older.

Having been in the military myself, there is an awful moment when you're in this moment of conflict.

I wanted to apprentice myself to the dailiness of the war's beginning phase. It's truer and more frightening that way - when you're afloat on a little dingy in the midst of it all.

Why do our parents have the ability to make us feel like children even when our hair is graying and we have a mortgage that feels like a Third World debt? (135)

Indians scattered on dawn's highway bleeding/Ghosts crowd the young child's fragile eggshell mind.

My colleagues and I are of that generation of young men who went through the Second World War and the Japanese Occupation and emerged determined that no one–neither Japanese nor British–had the right to push and kick us around. We determined that we could govern ourselves and bring up our children in a country where we can be proud to be self-respecting people.

The best security for old age: respect your children.

No man has a right to leave his wife to fight the battle alone if he is able to help. No man has a right to desert his children if he can possibly be of use. As long as he can add to the comfort of those he loves, as long as he can . . . be of any use, it is his duty to remain.

I've met many young women who are HIV positive and courageously fighting the disease. Their determination to live a full life and see their children live in a better world is deeply inspiring to me.

I hate it when women fight aging with plastic surgery or fashion choices. There's this arrogant youth worship in our society.

We want the world to focus on children whose lives have been devastated by AIDS. The millions of children who are missing their parents; their childhood, their future but most importantly, they are missing YOU. Everyone can make a real difference. Your voice is needed in a global movement that can change their world.

Marriage still means a lot more in the country I come from than it does here. I don't think there's anything to be gained by it for the couple. But for children I think it's an important thing.

Most people don't grow up. Most people age. They find parking spaces, honor their credit cards, get married, have children, and call that maturity. What that is, is aging.

What is so nice & so unexpected about life is the way it improves as it goes along. I think you should impress this fact on your children because I think young people have an awful feeling that life is slipping past them & they must do something - catch something - they don't quite know what, whereas they've only got to wait & it all comes.

My goal was not to have huge luxuries. As a child, I wanted a house with a garden, which I have today. This is what I dreamed of. I’d never worry about age if I knew I could go on being loved and having the possibility to love... So it isn’t age or even death that one fears, as much as loneliness and the lack of affection.