Jeane Kirkpatrick
Solidarity was the movement that turned the direction of history, I think.Collection: History
We have war when at least one of the parties to a conflict wants something more than it wants peace.Collection: Peace
Democracy not only requires equality but also an unshakable conviction in the value of each person, who is then equal.Collection: Equality
Cross cultural experience teaches us not simply that people have different beliefs, but that people seek meaning and understand themselves in some sense as members of a cosmos ruled by God.Collection: Experience
I think that it's always appropriate for Americans and for American foreign policy to make clear why we feel that self-government is most compatible with peace, the well-being of people, and human dignity.Collection: Peace
I was a woman in a man's world. I was a Democrat in a Republican administration. I was an intellectual in a world of bureaucrats. I talked differently. This may have made me a bit like an ink blot.Collection: Politics
What takes place in the Security Council more closely resembles a mugging than either a political debate or an effort at problem-solving.
I conclude that it is a fundamental mistake to think that salvation, justice, or virtue come through merely human institutions.
I'm a political scientist and I study these things, and I know that economic problems, with the rising unemployment and inflation and low productivity and so forth, were a factor in that election, in that defeat of President Carter.
Democrats can't get elected unless things get worse - and things won't get worse unless they get elected.
In the years just before... during the Carter years, the Soviets regularly violated, if you will, both the spirit and theletter of arms control agreements, I think, that they had negotiated during the period of detente.
Look, I don't even agree with myself at times.
A government is not legitimate merely because it exists.
Truth, which is important to a scholar, has got to be concrete. And there is nothing more concrete than dealing with babies, burps and bottles, frogs and mud.
I believe that detente was having almost the opposite effect of what was intended. What was intended was to sort of end the contest for power and to stop Soviet expansion, especially by military means and the military build-up, the military contest.
I always assume that democracy is the only good form of government, quite frankly, and democracy is always to be preferred.
The real point is that totalitarian regimes have claimed jurisdiction over the whole person, and the whole society, and they don't at all believe that we should give unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God's.
There is an absolutely fundamental hostility on the part of totalitarian regimes toward religion.
A doctrine of class war seemed to provide a solution to the problem of poverty to people who know nothing about how wealth is created.
That is simply that Marxism has been tremendously fashionable in our time, so it has infected a very large number of major institutions in many countries of the world. So I suppose that we shouldn't be too surprised that it should infect the church as well.
Just as the Russians and the Soviets didn't manage to wipe out languages in Lithuania, neither have they managed to wipe out religion to the extent that we had feared.
I think that there is absolutely no free market in modern industrial states.
There is no pure free-market economy.
And I think detente had manifestly failed, and that the pursuit of it was encouraging Soviet expansion and rendering the world more dangerous, and especially rendering the Western world in greater peril.
And I have no doubt that the American people generally believe the world is safer, and that we are safer, when we are stronger.
Words can destroy. What we call each other ultimately becomes what we think of each other, and it matters.Collection: Healing
Democrats can't get elected unless things get worse-and things won't get worse unless they get elected.Collection: Humorous
For all their faults, right-wing authoritarian regimes more easily accept democratic reforms than left-wing totalitarian states.Collection: War
History is a better guide than good intentions.Collection: Women
When Marxist dictators shoot their way into power in Central America, the Democrats don't blame the guerrillas and their Soviet allies, they blame United States' policies of one hundred years ago, but then they always blame America first.Collection: War
The absence of utopianism in the Constitution, law, and traditional political culture has been ... important in limiting expectations concerning what can be achieved by politics. The history of the last two centuries confirms what the framers of the Constitution understood: that the perfect is the enemy of the good, and the search for unalloyed virtue in public life leads to unalloyed terror.Collection: Law
Democracy not only requires equality but also an unshakable conviction in the value of each person, who is then equal. Cross cultural experience teaches us not simply that people have different beliefs, but that people seek meaning and understand themselves in some sense as members of a cosmos ruled by God.Collection: People
Americans need to face the truth about themselves, no matter how pleasant it is.Collection: Needs
Vietnam presumably taught us that the United States could not serve as the world's policeman; it should also have taught us the dangers of trying to be the world's midwife to democracy when the birth is scheduled to take place under conditions of guerrilla war.Collection: Military
Truth, which is important to a scholar, has to be concrete. And there is nothing more concrete than dealing with babies, burps and bottles, frogs and mud.Collection: Baby
Mr. President, we've taken off our "Kick Me" sign.Collection: Taken
Democracy not only requires equality but also an unshakable conviction in the value of each person, who is then equalCollection: Equality
Tyranny and anarchy are alike incompatible with freedom, security, and the enjoyment of opportunity.Collection: Opportunity
The speed with which armies collapse, bureaucracies abdicate, and social structures dissolve once the autocrat is removed frequently surprises American Policy makers.Collection: Army
A doctrine of class war seemed to provide a solution to the problem of poverty to people who know nothing about how wealth is createdCollection: War
Power ... is not an end in itself, but is an instrument that must be used toward an end.Collection: Power
All of us confront limits of body, talent, temperament. But that is not all. We are, all of us, also constrained by our time, our place, our civilization.Collection: Civilization
I think that it's always appropriate for Americans and for American foreign policy to make clear why we feel that self-government is most compatible with peace, the well-being of people, and human dignityCollection: Thinking
No idea holds greater sway in the minds of educated Americans that the belief that it is possible to democratize governments anytime and anywhere under any circumstances.Collection: Government
Decades, if not centuries are normally required for people to acquire the necessary disciplines and habits. In Britain, the road [to democratic government] took seven centuries to traverse.Collection: Government
They (american press) always blame America first!Collection: America
I always assume that democracy is the only good form of government, quite frankly, and democracy is always to be preferredCollection: Government
And I have no doubt that the American people generally believe the world is safer, and that we are safer, when we are strongerCollection: Believe
Straying off course is not recognized as a capital crime by civilized nations.Collection: Civilized Nations
Society has never barred women from bread-winning roles, but only from economic roles that are profitable and respectable.Collection: Winning