Quotes from Samantha Power

Another time, after failing to get my attention as I participated in a White House conference call on Russia sanctions, Declan stomped away, muttering, "Putin, Putin, Putin . . . When is it going to be Declan, Declan, Declan

After Assad's chemical weapons attacks in 2013, I believe that the United States should have followed through on Obama's threats and bombed the Syrian military targets designated by the Pentagon.

Mort [Abramowitz] was the first person I came to know well who had helped to make foreign policy at such rarified levels, and over time he would drill into me a simple truth: governments can either do harm or do good. What we do, he would say, depends on one thing: the people. Institutions, big and small, were made up of people. People had values, and people made choices.

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 no stick at all.

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

when I chaired meetings in 2009 to consider whether our administration should take a fresh position on something, I often heard one of two entrenched views: We never do that, or We always do that. The past was prologue: those who had conceived of policies in a certain way were ill disposed to try something new.

As my doubts about whether to move to the Balkans lingered, I devised a test for myself that I have used many times since. The test, as I put it then, was as follows: If I end up not making it as a journalist, will something else I learn in the process make it worth trying? I would come to call this the in trying for Y, the most I accomplish is X test, or the X test.

When USUN diplomats committed the cardinal sin of 'admiring the problem,' I would handwrite on their memos, 'If you were Obama, what would you do?' (p. 350).

However, the 1973 War Powers Resolution Act stipulated that, when Congress has not authorized a military operation, the President must report the action to Congress within forty-eight hours and remove US armed forces from 'hostilities' within sixty days (p. 374).

When I visited the ambassador from Grenada, she summed up the dynamic with a phrase I had heard often, 'If America sneezes, people in my country catch a cold' (p. 402).

The ugly political winds in the United States contrasted sharply with the earnest gravity of the occasion. Donald Trump had launched his campaign for president on a platform that blatantly stoked fear about immigrants and refugees, falsely depicting them as criminals and terrorists who were cannily masquerading as persecuted civilians.

was reminded of a story about the contentious talks during the nineteenth-century Congress of Vienna. After the Austrian diplomat Metternich was awakened with news that an ambassador he had been sparring with had died in the night, Metternich reportedly asked, "What can have been his motive?

Nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you are thinking about

I'm the guy who does his job," Wahlberg responds. "You must be the other guy.

Indeed, the Pentagon famously has only slightly fewer people serving in marching bands than the State Department has diplomats.

I was struck by the importance of dignity as a historical force. "What was horrible about the communist rule," Tatjana told us, "was that the man in front of you ordering you around was very stupid, and you had to listen to him." Even amid jailings and torture, these smaller humiliations ground people down.

It's not ideal to always be one eye on the Blackberry and two arms around my children. For the sake of mothers out there who don't have the Blackberry but do have the children and are hoping someone will be raising their voice on their behalf, it's a great privilege.

As even a democracy like the United States has shown, waging war can benefit a leader in several ways: it can rally citizens around the flag, it can distract them from bleak economic times, and it can enrich a country's elites.

I've got two small kids. I want to make sure they grow up to be good people. Do they treat people well? Are they kind?

America needs a sensible, sustainable Iran policy that can meet U.S. security and economic interests, command international support and withstand the shifting Middle Eastern sands.

India is at the vanguard of figuring out how to exploit technology and innovation on behalf of democratic accountability.

I like to think that as I get older I'm getting better at spending time with people who have qualities that make them worth spending time with.

My favorite things in life are my children. If somebody wants to understand me, there's no better window into that than my children.

Rising anti-Semitism is rarely the lone or the last expression of intolerance in a society.