Henry Paulson Quotes

My priority is to give the United States the kind of influence it should have.

Our alliances and our credibility are crucial elements of our working capital in advancing America's interests in the world, and they have been eroded over the last four years.

In the international world, when General Electric walks into the room, the Sixth Fleet walks in behind them.

In Ankara, your words might weigh more than that of the U.S. administration.

To be sure, China is nowhere as powerful as the U.S., but it has acquired the ability to impose its will on individual nations around the world. From Australia to Germany, South Africa to South Korea, political leaders are careful not to rub China the wrong way.

I cite these events because I think they underline two very disturbing phenomena - the loss of U.S. international credibility, the growing U.S. international isolation.

We speak of the United States as a “benign hegemony”.

Putin has put Russia on a path to be a world power with global influence.

There is no substitute for American leadership and exceptionalism.

We need to build on our diplomatic networks, and the unrivalled expertise of our Foreign Office, to project a positive image for Britain as a force for good in the world.

If you didn't know better, you might have thought in 2003 and 2004 that U.S. government strategy was being set by people trying to make enemies rather than friends in the Arab-Islamic world. And if you didn't know better, you might think that the Chinese government's approach to the Olympics is being set by people trying to make the country look bad.

I recognize the United States is a superpower. It has various interests. It has to balance various things.

We've built the largest empire in the history of the world. It's been done over the last 50 years since World War II with very little military might, actually. It's only in rare instances like Iraq where the military comes in as a last resort.

The dramatic rise of Turkey in the councils of world power was one of the main geopolitical developments of 2010.

Obama's foreign policy is strangely self-centered, focused on himself and the United States rather than on the conduct and needs of the nations the United States allies with, engages with, or must confront.

I'll put it frankly - Britain has more influence in China than Norway or Switzerland, with all respect for the other countries.

So for mutual interest, I do want American presence in this region.

The United States has got to adopt a policy of befriending and creating allies around the world.

Turkey has worked alongside its allies from the beginning.

I believe a relationship with a country is simply bound to the interests of two countries and not by personal issues.

It is no exaggeration to say that Syria holds the key for nearly all of America's foreign policy goals in the Middle East. As Syria goes, so goes the region.

The most successful cultural diplomacy strategy integrates people-to-people or arts/culture/media-to-people interactions into the basic business of diplomacy. The programs in Afghanistan, Egypt, and Iran all contribute to core goals of U.S. policy in those countries.

American-French relations, their pitch and volume, have always been influenced by the media.

But Italy can only have any real influence on world affairs if it carries weight in Europe.

As far as the international issues are concerned, the most important thing is the state of the transatlantic relationships, Euro-Atlantic relationships: how to develop them and how to strengthen them further.