Jeane Kirkpatrick Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
-
“A government is not legitimate merely because it exists.”
-- Jeane Kirkpatrick -
“I think that Ronald Reagan wanted to hear other people's views, and he always listened carefully, and from time to time he changed his own mind about a position. And especially he took pains to listen carefully to foreign leaders with whom he was dealing.”
-- Jeane Kirkpatrick -
“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.”
-- Jeane Kirkpatrick -
“I conclude that it is a fundamental mistake to think that salvation, justice, or virtue come through merely human institutions.”
-- Jeane Kirkpatrick -
“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.”
-- Jeane Kirkpatrick -
“Words can destroy. What we call each other ultimately becomes what we think of each other, and it matters.”
-- Jeane Kirkpatrick -
“Democracy not only requires equality but also an unshakable conviction in the value of each person, who is then equal”
-- Jeane Kirkpatrick -
“Democrats can't get elected unless things get worse-and things won't get worse unless they get elected.”
-- Jeane Kirkpatrick -
“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.”
-- Jeane Kirkpatrick -
“Mr. President, we've taken off our "Kick Me" sign.”
-- Jeane Kirkpatrick -
“When the San Francisco Democrats treat foreign affairs as an afterthought, as they did, they behaved less like a dove or a hawk than like an ostrich - convinced it could shut out the world by hiding its head in the sand.”
-- Jeane Kirkpatrick -
“It was not malaise we suffered from; it was Jimmy Carter - and Walter Mondale.”
-- Jeane Kirkpatrick -
“Society has never barred women from bread-winning roles, but only from economic roles that are profitable and respectable.”
-- Jeane Kirkpatrick -
“I don't think the government (of El Salvador) was responsible. The nuns were not just nuns; the nuns were political activists. We ought to be a little more clear-cut about this than we usually are. They were political activists on behalf of the Frente and somebody who is using violence to oppose the Frente killed them.”
-- Jeane Kirkpatrick -
“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”
-- Jeane Kirkpatrick -
“And I have no doubt that the American people generally believe the world is safer, and that we are safer, when we are stronger”
-- Jeane Kirkpatrick -
“[The American position at the UN is] essentially impotent, without influence, heavily outvoted, and isolated.”
-- Jeane Kirkpatrick -
“I always assume that democracy is the only good form of government, quite frankly, and democracy is always to be preferred”
-- Jeane Kirkpatrick -
“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”
-- Jeane Kirkpatrick -
“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.”
-- Jeane Kirkpatrick -
“There is an absolutely fundamental hostility on the part of totalitarian regimes toward religion.”
-- Jeane Kirkpatrick -
“I think that there is absolutely no free market in modern industrial states.”
-- Jeane Kirkpatrick -
“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.”
-- Jeane Kirkpatrick -
“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.”
-- Jeane Kirkpatrick -
“History is a better guide than good intentions.”
-- Jeane Kirkpatrick -
“Straying off course is not recognized as a capital crime by civilized nations.”
-- Jeane Kirkpatrick -
“We have war when at least one of the parties to a conflict wants something more than it wants peace.”
-- Jeane Kirkpatrick -
“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”
-- Jeane Kirkpatrick -
“What takes place in the Security Council more closely resembles a mugging than either a political debate or an effort at problem-solving.”
-- Jeane Kirkpatrick -
“Americans need to face the truth about themselves, no matter how pleasant it is.”
-- Jeane Kirkpatrick
