Samantha Power Quotes

You don't despair about something like the Middle East, you just do the best you can.

In all my travels, I've never seen a country's population more determined to forgive, and to build and succeed than in Rwanda.

Sport can create hope, where once there was only despair

But you can build a future out of anything. A scrap, a flicker. The desire to go forward, slowly, one foot at a time. You can build an airy city out of ruins.

Rwanda has emerged from the devastation of genocide and become more secure and prosperous than anyone had a right to expect.

I do think that humanitarians and journalists alike have focused on all the things that go wrong, and that they sometimes leave the perception in the public that the war on poverty has been lost. That Africa is just a bottomless pit of despair. When, in fact, really the opposite is true on both fronts.

9/11 occurs, and you're going to rebuild, and after awhile, the memory will be there, but there will be something new there, and different, and functioning, and electric.

Action is the antidote to despair.

I see courage everywhere I go in Africa. Fearless human rights activists in Darfur. Women peace advocates in eastern Congo. Former child soldiers in Northern Uganda who now are helping other former child soldiers return to civilian life.

I have lived in countries that were coming out of conflict: Ireland, South Africa, the Czech republic. People there are overflowing with energy.

The promise of peace seems very far away, but you keep working steadily with good and uplifting attitudes, and that's sometimes tough in the environment we're in.

Let us be shy no longer. Let us go to our strength. Let us offer hope. Let us tell the world that a new age is not only possible but probable.

Sometimes things have to get worse before they get better.

I'm a believer in forgiveness. I have worked with people who have been in gangs and now dedicate their lives to helping inner city kids. I've run offender services with teachings of responsibility, empathy and understanding of the victims at their heart. I've seen people change.

In difficult times, it's important to speak up. We cannot change the past, but we can impact the future.

I think, you know, the people that have seen my work, I think it speaks to the possibility of getting better, and, I'm sorry, I'm still on the last caller.

Change doesn't have to be hard, and healing doesn't have to hurt. Surely by now you know that every thing happens for a reason! There is something better awaiting you on the other side of this.

Do not despair, my friend. Today is theirs, but the future is ours

It may not necessarily be the way I would like to see it happen, but the reality is we could still bring millions of people out of the darkness into the light.

There is no situation that is not transformable. There is no person who is hopeless. There is no set of circumstances that cannot be turned about by ordinary human beings and their natural capacity for love of the deepest sort.

Instead of fighting the darkness, you bring in the light.

You can change things, you can make things better.

Vengeance is not the point: change is.

Yes, we can. Yes, we can change. Yes, we can.

Any movie that has that spirit and says things can be changed is worth making.