Quotes from Samantha Power

What is most needed in Darfur is an international peacekeeping and protection presence, and this is what the Sudanese government most wants to avoid.

American decision-makers must understand how damaging a foreign policy that privileges order and profit over justice really is in the long term.

All we talk about is 'Islamic terrorism.' If the two words are associated for long enough it's obviously going to have an effect on how people think about Muslims.

Being an occupier is not good for anybody's global standing. It is a catalyst for terrorist recruitment.

The media is an ally when it comes to showing the truth about terrorist groups. Attacking the media will not produce a more compliant citizenry. It will produce a more alienated, suspicious and disenfranchised public, one more likely to chafe under a government's attempts at control, all to the benefit of terrorist groups.

I was extremely close to my father, inseparable. Where we hung out most of the time was the pub.

The United States and the Obama administration have consistently opposed the delegitimation of Israel. We've also consistently pushed for legitimation of Israel across the U.N. system. We uniformly oppose one-sided actions designed to punish Israel, and we will continue to do so.

Foreign policy is an explicitly amoral enterprise.

The story of U.S. policy during the genocide in Rwanda is not a story of willful complicity with evil. U.S. officials did not sit around and conspire to allow genocide to happen.

There are times when the best medication and therapist simply can't help a soldier suffering from this new generation of peacekeeping injury. The anger, the rage, the hurt, and the cold loneliness that separates you from your family, friends, and society's normal daily routine are so powerful that the option of destroying yourself is both real and attractive.

In "A Problem from Hell," I had highlighted the work of Albert Hirschman, the Princeton economist who published the landmark book The Rhetoric of Reaction in 1991. Hirschman's thesis was that those who didn't want to pursue a particular course of action tended to argue that a given policy would be futile ("futility"), that it would likely make matters worse ("perversity"), or that it would imperil some other goal ("jeopardy").

Mum, since when have you ever decided whether or not to do something based on an assumption that you will fail?" I asked. "If I think everyone else will be better than me, then you're right, I shouldn't try. But if that is my approach, maybe I should just preemptively admit defeat and retire now.

I was chilled by the promise of protection that had drawn a child out of a basement and onto an exposed Sarajevan playground.

Having survived what he called the "public colonoscopy" of almost a year of campaigning, he could finally focus on the two dimensions of the contest that he had a real knack for: grassroots organizing—and winning.

By 2003 he had begun to worry that powerful countries were pursuing their own security in ways that aggravated their peril. He

The scenes reminded me of a Macedonian satirist's brilliant summation of the ethos behind the killing: "Why should I be a minority in your state when you can be a minority in mine?

And here it was 1988, and in Proxmire's words, the Congress had gone sound to sleep: 'We should take a special international prize for gross hypocrisy. The Senate resoundingly passes the ratification of the Genocide Treaty. We thereby tell the world that we recognize this terrible crime. Then what do we do about it? We do nothing about it. We speak loudly but carry not stick at all.

Here we go again," Obama told me as we entered one hearing in which Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was testifying. "We will faithfully pretend to be asking questions, but we will instead give statements. She will faithfully pretend to answer our questions, but will instead answer questions we didn't ask so as to deliver talking points we've all heard before. And the hearing will end, and we will walk out of here, calling it 'democratic accountability.

When Taimour was hit by a bullet in the left shoulder, he began to stagger toward the man who shot him, reaching out with his hands. He remembered the look in the soldier's eyes. 'He was about to cry,' Taimour said three years later.

Agency. Self-determination. Dignity. Solidarity. We could not discount the potential impact of even one such altered perspective on a young girl, her family, and, eventually, on an entire community.

The world is filled with broken places. Pick your battles, and go win some.

Mike Bloomberg

Sometimes you just have to take the time to appreciate a good thing, even if it doesn't necessarily bring you exactly what you want -Obama

Sometimes you just have to take the time to appreciate a good thing, even if it doesn't necessarily bring you exactly what you want