Desiree Rogers Quotes

One of these days I’m going to blast President Truman’s State Department wide open.

Do we want someone as secretary of state that is somehow tainted in this Benghazi issue?

I'm never nervous when I go to meet heads of state. I feel they should be nervous, because they are the ones who'll be held accountable for the lives their decisions will impact the most.

For somebody who loves foreign policy, being Secretary is the best job in the world - but it doesn't happen twice.

I am often asked if, when I was secretary, I had problems with foreign men. That is not who I had problems with, because I arrived in a very large plane that said United States of America. I had more problems with the men in our own government.

My friends all say I'm going to be Secretary of State. But I don't see how that would be much different from the job I have now.

The Secretary of State exists only to recognize the existence of a world which Congress would rather ignore ... Since the first day the Senate existed, it has always intrigued against the Secretary of State ...

The Secretary of State has always stood as much alone as the historian. Required to look far ahead and around him, he measures forces unknown to party managers, and has found Congress more or less hostile since Congress first sat.

I go back to Washington every year to see the President and I get my orders directly from him—not from those pipsqueaks [at the State Department.]

You'd make a great Secretary of State because State Department personnel don't answer questions completely either.

The vast importance of the trust, and the operations of treaties as laws, plead strongly for the participation ... of the legislative body in the office of making them ... It must indeed be clear to a demonstration that the joint possession of the power in question, by the President and Senate, would afford a greater prospect of security, than the separate possession of it by either of them

I have no disposition to withhold any information which the duty of my station will permit, or the public good shall require to be disclosed: and in fact, all the Papers affecting the negotiation with Great Britain were laid before the Senate, when the Treaty itself was communicated for their consideration and advice

We cannot clean up the mess in Washington, balance the budget, reduce taxes, check creeping Socialism, tell what is muscle or fat in our sprawling rearmament programs, purge subversives from our State Department, unless we come to grips with our foreign policy, upon which all other policies depend

Embassies are fixed assets and as such are always subject to terrorist attacks.

Secretary Tillerson is not going anywhere. I can vouch for that. He is where he is, he continues to be strong in how he handles foreign policy, and I continue to work well with him.

To say that I'm going to veto something that I haven't read is just - or sign something that I haven't read - I don't think is good policy for any chief executive.

The interesting part is, that being the United States Secretary of State, most places I went didn't have a problem with me being a woman, because I was representing the United States.

Earlier this month the State Department gave the umpteenth performance of its popular play, Please Tread on Me, with Ceylon as guest star, and the usual cast.

I can't possibly put myself in his [Tony Blair's] shoes and be inside his head but what I can say is that the security of the nation is the first duty of any government but at the same time for me going to war would always be the last resort. I would exhaust all other opportunities first.

I would never want to see myself viewed as beating the drums of war, ... but I would rather live with that image than look into the mirror and see a member of Congress who failed to do his duty.

So what we have is an American foreign policy that is inextricably linked to domestic matters. It is very dangerous for a politician who desires nothing more than to stay in office to address the mindset that any change in policy is appeasement. And Americans will accept that for a certain amount of time.

The world understands that our country could solve all conflicts with military solutions, but we won't because we have leaders and we have a moral responsibility but we have also have a political - we have a political leader who is scared and who is raised on the idea that American force is the true evil.

Today Prince William went to Washington, D.C., and he met with President Obama. He said, 'It feels weird being in the White House because I'm not an American.' And then Prince William said, 'Yeah, me too.'

It may be too much to expect that nations should be governed in their relations towards each other by the precepts of Christian morality, but surely it is not too much to ask that they should conform to the code of courtesy and good breeding recognized among gentlemen in the intercourse of social life.

Honored delegates, leaders of the world, I pretend for a living.