Samantha Power Quotes

Silence in the face of atrocity is not neutrality; silence in the face of atrocity is acquiescence.

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

Success is not about who never fails. It is about who can spring - or even stagger - back up.

Violence against women isn't cultural, it's criminal. Equality cannot come eventually, it's something we must fight for now.

Without investing in the rule of law for the poor, none of the other investments we make will be sustainable.

It is easy to get used to the morning news, habituated. But don't. The morning news is yours to alter.

My basic feeling about military intervention is that it should be a last resort, undertaken only to stave off large-scale bloodshed.

Foreign policy is an explicitly amoral enterprise.

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.

Historical hypocrites have themselves carried out the very human rights abuses that they suddenly decide warrant intervention elsewhere.

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

The U.S. government engages with many countries around the world in official dialogues on human rights.

There is a convergence of crises that makes it challenging to keep the world's attention.

I'm going to Washington on a fateful, even historic, mission. I feel that I am an emissary of all Israel's citizens, even those who do not agree with me, and of the entire Jewish people

In the '90s, there was scant presidential leadership and insufficient domestic political mobilization for foreign policy grounded in human rights.

In the 2000 election, George W. Bush, who had shirked military service, succeeded in presenting himself as more reliable on national security than Al Gore.

We know that often holding those who have carried out mass atrocities accountable is at times our best tool to prevent future atrocities.

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

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

Countries that intervene militarily rarely do so out of pure altruism.

Brokenness is the operative issue of our time - broken souls, broken hearts, broken places.

We need to deter the Palestinians in any way we can.

'Acting as if...' I decided, ridiculously in retrospect, that my experience covering women's volleyball for my college newspaper was sufficient for me to at least try to become a war correspondent.

The key to U.N. reform is giving Americans a clearer picture of what the U.N. is and what it isn't, what it can be and what it can't be.

International institutions are composed of governments. Governments control their own military forces and police.

One of the things that a president needs in the face of genocide is resolve.

When dictators feel their support slipping among adults, it is not unusual for them to alter school textbooks in the hope of enlisting impressionable youths in their cause.

There is a fair amount of competition, obviously, with ISIL and the terrorist networks around the world, China also posing a different kind of threat to the rules-based order.

Since 9/11, there has been a huge leap in people wanting to get personally involved in public service and international affairs.

If you represent everyone, in some ways you represent no one. You're un-owned.

Re-examining our reasoning is not something that has come naturally to American statesmen.

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.

I happen to miss the Constitution; I thought it was a good document.

President Reagan, of course, did more than any other person to entrench the Republican reputation for toughness on national security.

No more than a surgeon can operate while tweeting can you reach your potential with one ear in, one ear out. You actually have to reacquaint yourself with concentration. We all do.

I believe the United States is the greatest country on Earth. I really do.

Democracies are expense-averse and they think in terms of short-term, political interests rather than a long-term interest in stability.

Engaging Iran won't guarantee improved U.S.-Iranian relations or a more stable Gulf region. But not engaging means more of the same.

I think Obama is right when he talks about the rule of law as a cornerstone of what the United States should stand for.

When I wake up in the middle of the night when I hear one of my kids coughing or crying, I think about Syria.

We need to find means for cooperation.

When I wake up in the morning, I think about Syria.

Over the years, Western governments have been criticized for working with foreign police who have proved abusive or corrupt.

I think we do have an interest in combating states that try to cross borders and steal parts of other people's country.

We have an interest in combating tactics in war that are abhorrent and that only fuel terrorism because they incite people on the ground.

I think the point that we all agree upon is that we have to engage with Russia.

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

There's something beautiful about working in the one place in the world where the world is present, like United Nations. Otherwise, one would have to go to each of these countries to negotiate.

My kids are my salvation.... It's a delight to walk in and get charged by a five-year-old and a two-year-old. That'll make you forget the darkness.

I get to be married to the liveliest mind I've ever encountered.... I hit the jackpot.