Mobutu Sese Seko Quotes

The shortcomings of America's political leaders do not stop at our borders.

I shook Obama's hand and I said, 'I want to be your friend.' My hand is still outstretched. I am not Obama's enemy, but it's difficult not see imperialism in Washington. Those who don't see it don't want to see it, like the ostrich.

Power is the true reserve currency in international affairs.

Canadians don't have a very big political lever, we're nice guys.

I think it is important to ask ourselves as citizens, not as Democrats attacking the administration, but as citizens, whether a world power can really provide global leadership on the basis of fear and anxiety?

American policy seems to be wed to a perpetual state of war. Why? History shows that the world will always be in flux or turmoil, with different peoples competing for visibility and power. The U.S. cannot fix the fate of every nation.

I think I can regard myself as a political decision-maker.

In politics nothing is contemptible.

If I only had 12 years left to live, I'd want to live it as a member of Congress because that was the 12 longest years of my life.

Venezuelan interests are to be defended by Venezuela. The U.S. should defend the interests of the U.S. Where are the U.S. people, where are the intellectuals, who could put limits on their government?

One of the things that you have trouble with politicians, particularly in Washington, is when you get mad at them and you can't touch them; you can't punch them; you can't yell at them.

Well, if you're looking for me to lead a normal representative life, well good luck finding a foreign secretary who'd be like that - totally dependant on the political system and has never earned any money. Then you'll get the politicians you deserve.

Politics, I believe, is a full-time occupation.

Bringing democratic control to the conduct of foreign policy requires a struggle merely to force the issue onto the public agenda.

The United States influences government and life everywhere else.

It's also natural in that part of the world to blame what people view as the... as the most important authority in the region, and that currently is the United States of America.

We have no control over the outcome of anything. Like the planet and global warming, we don't control that. If politicians want a war we don't control that. Acts of terrorism, we can't control them.

The way you change foreign policy is by raising the domestic political cost of the policy.

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.

Every time something has gone wrong with foreign policy, it’s been because the American people have not been involved in the process.

Japan is running an ongoing political campaign in America as if it were a third major party.

The Constitution is an invitation to struggle for the privilege of directing American foreign policy.

All foreign policy is the intervention of one nation's domestic politics into another nation's domestic politics.

The bloke who ends up sitting in the White House partially controls what we [the British] get up to.

Mr. Roosevelt. You perhaps believe that your intervention can be effective anywhere.