Top 41 Michael Mandelbaum Quotes
#1. The government can give citizens opportunity and it's their responsibility to take advantage of it.
Michael Mandelbaum
#2. Let me remind you all that the first task of American foreign policy is to reduce threats to the United States.
Michael Mandelbaum
#3. The less oil the world uses, the less important the region that has so much of it becomes.
Michael Mandelbaum
#4. People do not change when you tell them they should; they change when they tell themselves they must,
Michael Mandelbaum
#5. After all, the past is our only real guide to the future, and historical analogies are instruments for distilling and organizing the past and converting it to a map by which we can navigate.
Michael Mandelbaum
#6. American influence in the world is certainly considerable, but the United States does not control, directly or indirectly, the politics and economics of other societies, as empires have always done, save for a few special cases that turn out to be the exceptions that prove the rule.
Michael Mandelbaum
#7. In truth, every American administration since that of Franklin D. Roosevelt has maintained close ties with the Saudi rulers, and for a single, simple reason: oil.
Michael Mandelbaum
#8. The values, the programs, the formula, the determination, and the patriotism responsible for America's past success are still here to be tapped.
Michael Mandelbaum
#9. The amount of military force necessary to provide reassurance depends on how dangerous people think the world is. And that I think ultimately depends upon the kinds of government that hold sway in major countries.
Michael Mandelbaum
#10. If architecture is, as is sometimes said, music set in concrete, then football and basketball may be said to be creativity embodied in team sports.
Michael Mandelbaum
#11. Economic growth is necessary to keep the promise - enormously important to individual Americans - that each generation will have the opportunity to become more prosperous than the preceding one, the popular term for which is 'the American dream.'
Michael Mandelbaum
#12. Football is controlled violence, but it is violence, which people have loved to watch since the gladiatorial contests in ancient Rome.
Michael Mandelbaum
#13. The American political system is so porous, it's so open, it's so frustrating for those who are trying to make policy.
Michael Mandelbaum
#14. While analogies are useful, however, they can also be misleading. They smuggle in assumptions that can be wrong.
Michael Mandelbaum
#15. The American empire will not disappear ... because America does not have an empire.
Michael Mandelbaum
#16. One thing worse than an America that is too strong, the world will learn, is an America that is too weak.
Michael Mandelbaum
#17. The United States contributes to peace in both by serving as a buffer between and among regional powers that, while not preparing for armed conflict, do not fully trust one another.
Michael Mandelbaum
#18. Societies raise their grandest monuments to what their cultures value most highly. As the tallest buildings in a city noted for tall buildings, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were certainly monumental.
Michael Mandelbaum
#19. Words matter, especially words defining complicated political arrangements, because they shape perceptions of the events of the past, attitudes toward policies being carried out in the present, and expectations about desirable directions for the future.
Michael Mandelbaum
#20. The United States doesn't do what it does in the world for altruistic reasons. Nobody set out to be the world's government.
Michael Mandelbaum
#21. To call the American role in the world imperial was, for many who did so, a way of asserting that the United States was misusing its power beyond its borders and, in so doing, subverting its founding political principles within them.
Michael Mandelbaum
#22. The United States plays, for the most part, a constructive global role, and to the extent that that role shrinks, other countries, even those most critical of what America does abroad, will suffer.
Michael Mandelbaum
#23. In the past, a blow to the international system's strongest power would have been welcomed by its rivals. In the wake of September 11, however, every significant government in the world declared its support for the United States.
Michael Mandelbaum
#24. The cardinal sin in sports, what could really wreck it, is not cheating to win, which has gone on forever, but cheating to lose. That threatens a fundamental aspect of sports' appeal, which is their spontaneity. If games are fixed, they're no different from movies; they're scripted.
Michael Mandelbaum
#25. The United States will continue to be number one, and I do not see any country or group of countries taking the United States' place in providing global public goods that underpin security and prosperity. The United States functions as the world's de facto government.
Michael Mandelbaum
#26. Inequality of any kind, once considered a normal, natural part of human existence, came to be seen in the course of the twentieth century as increasingly illegitimate.
Michael Mandelbaum
#27. Read the news section of the newspaper and there is confusion and uncertainty, a world buffeted by large forces people neither understand nor control. But turn to the sports section and it's all different.
Michael Mandelbaum
#28. In my experience, it's not just that serious books get a hearing on comedy shows. But serious books get a serious hearing, as well as a funny one, on comedy shows.
Michael Mandelbaum
#30. The real threat to world stability is not too much American power. It is too little American power.
Michael Mandelbaum
#31. The main division in the world is between democratic and undemocratic countries.
Michael Mandelbaum
#32. The war on terror, I believe, will be waged by effective intelligence and police work and cruise missiles.
Michael Mandelbaum
#33. American foreign policy, for all its shortcomings, has underpinned political stability around the world.
Michael Mandelbaum
#34. First of all, the world criticizes American foreign policy because Americans criticize American foreign policy. We shouldn't be surprised about that. Criticizing government is a God-given right - at least in democracies.
Michael Mandelbaum
#35. The attacks of September 11 persuaded many Americans that what might seem to be obscure or distant potential threats can very quickly materialize and it therefore makes sense to attend to them even before they become urgent.
Michael Mandelbaum
#36. American power confers benefits on most inhabitants of the planet, even on many who dislike it and some who actively oppose it, because the United States plays a major, constructive, and historically unprecedented role in the world.
Michael Mandelbaum
#37. The windfall of great riches can, if mismanaged, make things worse, not better, for the recipients.
Michael Mandelbaum
#39. A presidential candidate who appeared not to understand or respect the parameters of responsible foreign policy conduct would not get the political support necessary to win the office.
Michael Mandelbaum
#40. Certainly, protecting oppressed people, stopping ethnic conflict and promoting responsible governance are worthy goals. But none is as important for American security and prosperity as keeping the peace in the Middle East, Europe and East Asia.
Michael Mandelbaum
#41. All policy is a matter of gains and losses, upsides and downsides.
Michael Mandelbaum
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