Susan Rice Quotes

Sometimes everyone is foreign minister.

Like a lot of New Yorkers, I assumed that I knew all about the U.N. I was shocked to find out it's not like anything I had in mind. There are only six languages accepted there. It's considered international territory.

Foreign policy is like human relations, only people know less about each other.

India seeks to be a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council... things like this don't happen automatically, you need constant dialogue and discussion with the world.

You do not build a foreign policy based on one man.

Americans must step back and realize that an effective foreign policy is very difficult to devise, and we must present a united front to make it work.

When I became secretary of state, I felt one of my primary jobs was building relationships around the world.

You will never hear me denigrating other countries.

We have a much bigger objective. We've got to look at the long run here. This is an example - the situation between the United Nations and Iraq - where the United Nations is deliberately intruding into the sovereignty of a sovereign nation.... Now this is a marvelous precedent (to be used in) all countries of the world.

My father was a Foreign Service officer, a diplomat and an Arabist who spent virtually all his career in the Near East, as it was called in the State Department. So I spent most of my childhood among the Israelis and the Arabs of Palestine, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

The world of high-stakes international diplomacy can be rough and tumble, but it's more often than not a procession of suits and summits, protocol sessions and photo ops.

Well, I think the United States first of all has to recognize the world for what it is.

When I was in college, I became interested in various aspects of foreign policy and international relations. Even as a kid, I was interested in what I call, loosely speaking, forbidden knowledge.

In international relations, in foreign policy, a great deal has to do with historical circumstances, a great deal has to do with the sense and perception of people.

The answer dictates what the policy should be in our relationships with every country in the world.

The U.N. is much more than the case of Iraq.

One of the things I'm fascinated by as a traveler is watching how different countries control how they let the world encounter them.

Now, the United Nations is an organization that I believe was founded with good intentions. As a matter of fact, a prominent Tennessean named Cordell Hull was very involved with it.

The U.N. can be very frustrating and at times impotent, but it can also be a valuable forum for discussion and resolution of world problems. We should not walk away from it just because it's failed to live up to its promise.

The problem with the United Nations is that while democracy within nations is the best available form of government, democracy among nations can be a moral disaster - especially if some nations are not democracies.

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

Legislation that would withhold funding for the United Nations is fundamentally flawed in concept and practice, sets us back, is self-defeating, and doesn't work.

And Israel, being a tiny, small country, of course has interest to strengthen - we have interest to strengthen our relations with other countries, mostly countries that were hostile for many, many years.

Probably the most useful thing I can do as secretary of state is to assist the president in adapting and renewing the transnational institutions that were created after World War II.

Ambassadors are, by definition, foreign bodies.