Ambassador quotes

Explore inspiring quotes from diplomats, leaders, and influential figures in our Ambassador category. Learn about diplomacy, peace, and global relations.

I was taught to strive not because there were any guarantees of success but because the act of striving is in itself the only way to keep faith with life.

- Madeleine Albright

History is written backwards but lived forwards.

- Madeleine Albright

Whatever the job you are asked to do at whatever level, do a good job because your reputation is your resume.

- Madeleine Albright

We must be authors of the history of our age.

- Madeleine Albright

We live in an image society. Speeches are not what anybody cares about; what they care about is the picture.

- Madeleine Albright

To put it mildly, the world is a mess.

- Madeleine Albright

There is a special place in hell for women who don't help other women.

- Madeleine Albright

Real leadership comes from the quiet nudging of an inner voice. It comes from realizing that the time has come to move beyond waiting to doing.

- Madeleine Albright

Our collective experience has shown that when women have the power to make their own choices, good things happen.

- Madeleine Albright

It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I am not going to be silent.

- Madeleine Albright

If there's nobody in your way, you're not going anywhere.

- Madeleine Albright

I have very set and consistent principles, but I am flexible on tactics. I like to get the job done.

- Madeleine Albright

I have said this many times, that there seems to be enough room in the world for mediocre men, but not for mediocre women, and we really have to work very, very hard.

- Madeleine Albright

I do not believe that things happen accidentally; I believe you earn them.

- Madeleine Albright

As you go along your own road in life, you will, if you aim high enough, also meet resistance. But no matter how tough the opposition may seem, have courage still and persevere.

- Madeleine Albright

The reason I made women's issues central to American foreign policy, was not because I was a feminist, but because we know that societies are more stable if women are politically and economically empowered.

- Madeleine Albright

I'm not competing in Iowa for a reason.

- Jon Huntsman, Jr.

We are at war to liberate Iraq, to protect the people of the United States and other countries from the devastating impact of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction being used by terrorists or the Iraqi government to kill thousands of innocent civilians.

- Paul Cellucci

I respect the president. He and I have a difference of opinion on how to help the country we both love. But the question each of us wants the voters to answer is who will be the better president, not who is the better American.

- Jon Huntsman, Jr.

There was the situation in Nicaragua where the Sandinistas had taken over a couple of years earlier. There was a civil war going on in El Salvador and there was a similar situation in Guatemala. So Honduras was in a rather precarious geographic position indeed.

- John Negroponte