Madeleine Albright
Madeleine Albright
Madeleine Jana Korbel Albright is an American politician and diplomat. She is the first woman to have become the United States Secretary of State. She was nominated by U.S. President Bill Clinton on December 5, 1996, and was unanimously confirmed by a U.S. Senate vote of 99–0. She was sworn in on January 23, 1997...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth15 May 1937
CitySmichov, Czech Republic
CountryUnited States of America
What distinguishes Americans from many people in the world is our kind of endemic optimism.
Women are more than 50% of almost every country in the world. Countries rob themselves of the resources of women if they keep them as property. It isn't that women can't find work. It's just that women don't get paid for their work and are not recognized properly. It's something that has to be on the international agenda all the time.
It is an unfortunate fact that in many parts of the world women are considered property. An awful lot of injustice is obviously due to that; not just women's status in the home, but all kinds of laws that are even more discriminating.
I was a little girl in World War II and I'm used to being freed by Americans.
For somebody who loves foreign policy, being Secretary is the best job in the world - but it doesn't happen twice.
Today, I say that no nation in the world need be left out of the global system we are constructing.
I was not at all apprehensive about ... disease ... [it] had no terrors for me. The thing I most feared in the world was hunger. That was something of which I had personal knowledge.
The process of education in the oldest profession in the world is like any other educational process, in that it requires time andeffort and patience; it can only be acquired by taking one step at a time, though the steps become accelerated after the first few.
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.
There is plenty of room in the world for mediocre men but there is no room for mediocre women.
To put it mildly, the world is a mess
Even before I went to the UN, I often would want to say something in a meeting - only woman at the table - and I'd think, 'OK well, I don't think I'll say that. It may sound stupid.' And then some man says it, and everybody thinks it's completely brilliant, and you are so mad at yourself for not saying something.
Saddam's goal is to achieve the lifting of U.N. sanctions while retaining and enhancing Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. We cannot, we must not and we will not let him succeed.
Maybe if everybody in leadership was a woman, you might not get into the conflicts in the first place. But if you watch the women who have made it to the top, they haven't exactly been non-aggressive - including me.