Anne Applebaum Quotes

In the long term, Germany didn't need a finance minister who was absent during important negotiations in the European Council. But the chancellor strongly encouraged me to stay. And everything did work out for the best in the end.

If the Bush Administration cannot ensure Americans that they will be safe from the flu, how will they protect our country against a possible bio-terror or chemical attack? The American people deserve better.

If we can provide even a few months of early warning for just one pandemic, the benefits will outweigh all the time and energy we're devoting. Imagine preventing health crises, not just responding to them.

Anything you say before a pandemic occurs sounds alarmist; anything you say after it occurs is inadequate.

Making the bureaucracy accountable to the President in any comprehensive and enduring way is impossible. Making it alert to his preferences is possible in those cases where Presidents put loyal and competent subordinates in charge of making decisions.

In Great Britain, governments often change their policies without changing their men. In France, they usually change their men without changing their policy.

What we called the Civil Service was, in the main, merely a mass of Republican political appointees frozen into office by act of Congress.

The President [George W. Bush] has assembled a very effective White House staff. They do not squabble among themselves, and the do not leak indiscriminately—as opposed to discriminately.

I promise you the country would be in real trouble if I were really in the White House.

A minister of state is excusable for the harm he does when the helm of government has forced his hand in a storm; but in the calm he is guilty of all the good he does not do.

There is something wrong with the way in which we make our decisions. The Government listen too much to the pollsters and the party managers. The trouble is that they are not even very good at politics, and they are entering too much into policy decisions. As a result, there is too much short-termism, too much reacting to events, and not enough shaping of events. We give the impression of being in office but not in power. Far too many important decisions are made for 36 hours' publicity.

Avian flu, which has already killed 50 people, is only a mutation away from being transmissible from person to person. We have no immunity, no vaccines, and no cure. It is imperative that we strengthen our domestic vaccine supply, expand legal protections, encourage collaboration between the public and private sectors, and advance research and development. These initiatives will help protect us from a deadly viral outbreak that experts warn could come to our shores any day.

History has told us that no one can stop a pandemic. The question is: when is it going to happen? I don't think anybody has the answer to it. We have to be on the lookout for any time, any day.

There is a cost for investing in pandemic preparedness, but a much bigger cost for not investing in it.

Are those making these charges better equipped to deal with the Ebola threat than those they castigate? These easy charges, nurtured in hindsight, by people by people who have never had to make decisions or have responsibilities in the matter, play into the national penchant for finger-pointing and feed panic.

Donalt Trump has drained the swamp right into his Cabinet.

We have paid a huge price for our media being unable to frame the virus as a problem with a time dimension and one necessitating trade-offs.

I really enjoyed my time in state government. I thought we made a difference. I liked being a part of that effort. I had a different experience in Washington.

There is nothing new about the sudden enthusiasm for aggressive government intervention during a health crisis. Throughout history, pandemics have led to an expansion of the power of the state.

Back from 2001 to 2003, I wrote multiple editorials for The Washington Post about biological warfare and pandemic preparedness - issues that were at the top of everyone's agenda in the wake of 9/11 and the brief anthrax scare. At the time, some very big investments were made into precisely those issues, especially into scientific research.

More than 50 million people around the world died during the 1918-1919 flu pandemic. That's why we have epidemiologists all over the world tracking whether new strains of flu emerge.

If he truly thinks he can be president, Donald Trump needs to understand that we need real solutions - not more walls and giveaways to polluting special interests.

Foreign policy exactly suits Obama's strong points as a leader, which turn out not to be giving the masses a clear sense of direction and hope, but instead exercising good judgment on a case-by-case basis while thinking many steps ahead of the present moment.

Global pandemics, cyberwarfare, information warfare - these are threats that require highly motivated, highly educated bureaucrats; a national health-care system that covers the entire population; public schools that train students to think both deeply and flexibly; and much more.

Running a democratic country is one of the most difficult things for any government.