Foreign States Quotes

#1. The foreign states may become actively involved for positive purposes only if and when the internal resistance movement has already begun shaking the dictatorship, having thereby focused international attention on the brutal nature of the regime.

Gene Sharp

#2. Some foreign states will act against a dictatorship only to gain their own economic, political, or military control over the country.

Gene Sharp

#3. Official Washington cannot tell the American people that the real purpose of its gargantuan military expenditures and belligerent interventions is to make the world safe for General Motors, General Electric, General Dynamics, and all the other generals.

Michael Parenti

#4. Any decision to use lethal force against a United States citizen - even one intent on murdering Americans and who has become an operational leader of al-Qaida in a foreign land - is among the gravest that government leaders can face.

Eric Holder

#5. The people of the United Kingdom have spoken, and we respect their decision. The special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom is enduring, and the United Kingdom's membership in Nato remains a vital cornerstone of US foreign, security and economic policy.

Barack Obama

#6. In the United States today, the Declaration of Independence hangs on schoolroom walls, but foreign policy follows Machiavelli.

Howard Zinn

#7. No foreign policy can be sustained in the United States of America without the informed consent of the American people. And informed means just that, successes and failure, a realistic assessment of where we are and what the president plans to do about it.

Joe Biden

#8. Foreign aid is a method by which the United States maintains a position of influence and control around the world

John F. Kennedy

#9. When the ambassadors of other foreign countries come to Japan to make treaties, they can be told that such and such a treaty has been made with the ambassador of the United States, and they will rest satisfied with this.

Townsend Harris

#10. The truth is the Federal Reserve Board has usurped the Government of the United States. It controls everything here and it controls all our foreign relations. It makes and breaks government at will ...

Louis Thomas McFadden

#11. Let me be very clear: We monitor the risks of violent extremism taking root here in the United States. We don't have the luxury of focusing our efforts on one group; we must protect the country from terrorism whether foreign or homegrown, and regardless of the ideology that motivates its violence.

Janet Napolitano

#12. You want your diversified stock portfolio to include stocks from different industries, large companies, small companies, companies here in the United States, foreign companies, new companies, and old companies.

Suze Orman

#13. The only way to Cuba is with the CIA.

Phil Ochs

#14. Today, only two groups in the United States have total immunity from lawsuits: foreign diplomats and HMOs. We believe it's time to end diplomatic immunity for HMOs. Holding them accountable is the only way to guarantee that you get the health care your family deserves.

Tom Harkin

#15. If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightly consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg

#16. Americans, being a moral people, want their foreign policy to reflect the values we espouse as a nation. But Americans, being a practical people, also want their foreign policy to be effective.

George Shultz

#17. Governments often keep their populace in permanent states of vigilance or anxiety against foreign enemies as a control mechanism - the politics of fear.

Graham E. Fuller

#18. With hacking getting more and more sophisticated, the hacking community has gone from the hobbyist in the basement to huge sophisticated companies that are essentially doing this, or groups of people or foreign agents inside and outside the United States.

Tim Cook

#19. The course of the United States in World War II, I said, was dishonest, dishonorable, and ignominious, and the Sunpapers, by supporting Roosevelt's foreign policy, shared in this disgrace.

H.L. Mencken

#20. Every human being born within the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is in the language of your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen.

John Bingham

#21. Math and science fields are not the only areas where we see the United States lagging behind. Less than 1 percent of American high school students study the critical foreign languages of Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean or Russian, combined.

Cathy McMorris Rodgers

#22. It's alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States.

Vladimir Putin

#23. The United States has made serious mistakes in the conduct of its foreign affairs, which have had unfortunate repercussions long after the decisions were taken.

Nelson Mandela

#24. The United States, however, refused to recognize copyright for foreign authors until 1891,

Peter Baldwin

#25. British diplomats and Anglo-American types in Washington have a near-superstitious prohibition on uttering the words 'Special Relationship' to describe relations between Britain and America, lest the specialness itself vanish like a phantom at cock-crow.

Christopher Hitchens

#26. At a time when we are pleading with foreign governments to stop the export of cocaine, it is the height of hypocrisy for the United States to export tobacco.

C. Everett Koop

#27. I have said it before but it bears repeating: Aid is not a gift. The United States provides foreign assistance because it serves OUR interests.

Howard Berman

#28. The difficulty that many foreign authors face in having their works translated into English has effects far beyond the United States.

Stephen Kinzer

#29. We will never abdicate the security of the United States to a foreign country or refrain from taking action when appropriate. But we cannot ignore the reality that cooperative counterterrorism activities are a key to our national defense.

John O. Brennan

#30. The issue of war or peace is an issue that concerns not only experts on Foreign Affairs but every citizen of the United States.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

#31. The recent, single-year influx of unaccompanied minors from foreign countries into the United States is a direct result of President Obama's policies of encouraging amnesty and failing to enforce existing immigration laws.

James Lankford

#32. [States and the Federal government are] coordinate departments of one simple and integral whole ... The one is the domestic, the other the foreign branch of the same government.

Thomas Jefferson

#33. The United States has made a massive effort since the end of the Second World War to secure the dominance of its films in foreign markets - an achievement generally pushed home politically, by writing clauses into various treaties and aid packages.

Fredric Jameson

#34. When the States already had nuclear weapons, and the Soviet Union was only building them, we got a significant amount of information through Soviet foreign intelligence channels.

Vladimir Putin

#35. In America, conscription is unknown; men are enlisted for payment. Compulsory recruitment is so alien to the ideas and so foreign to the customs of the people of the United States that I doubt whether they would ever dare to introduce it into their law.

Alexis De Tocqueville

#36. Given the devaluation of literature and of the study of foreign languages per se in the United States, as well as the preponderance of theory over text in graduate literature studies, creative writing programs keep literature courses populated.

Marilyn Hacker

#37. The United States should ... avoid unilateral export controls and controls on technology widely available in world markets. Unilateral controls penalize U.S. exporters without advancing U.S. national security or foreign policy interests.

William J. Clinton

#38. War on terrorism defines the central preoccupation of the United States in the world today, and it does reflect in my view a rather narrow and extremist vision of foreign policy of the world's first superpower, of a great democracy, with genuinely idealistic traditions.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

#39. Canada and the United States have reached the point where we no longer think of each other as 'foreign' countries. We think of each other as friends, as peaceful and cooperative neighbors on a spacious and fruitful continent.

Harry S. Truman

#40. Today's announcement projects a picture of profound weakness in U.S. diplomacy. It should not have been a heavy lift for our diplomats in New York and in foreign capitals to recruit the necessary 96 affirmative votes to seat the United States in the new council.

Tom Lantos

#41. I'm pretty optimistic that in the future these kind of films will also be part of the main categories, perhaps not in a foreign language, but certainly more socially and politically engaged films, or films that will happen where the story takes place outside the United States.

Philippe Falardeau

#42. Obama's foreign policy is strangely self-centered, focused on himself and the United States rather than on the conduct and needs of the nations the United States allies with, engages with, or must confront.

Elliott Abrams

#43. Al Qaeda's central political objective is the creation of an Islamic republic, not the progressive realignment of American foreign policy.

Simon Cottee

#44. We wouldn't turn over our customs service or our border patrol to a foreign government. We shouldn't turn over the ports of the United States, either.

Bob Menendez

#45. I don't think any sensible person would disagree that the invasion of Iraq led to the massive level of instability that we're seeing right now. I think that was one of the worst foreign policy blunders in the modern history of the United States.

Bernie Sanders

#46. But now that foreign steel, and foreign cars, are moving into the United States in increased quantities at relatively low prices, the United States can no longer keep its business system fluid by inflation.

John Chamberlain

#47. Too often in the post-9/11 world, when the time has come to translate the moral, and essentially progressive, roots of foreign policy idealism into plans for American action, liberals have said, 'Duck.

Richard Just

#48. Another factor is the decision, made in 1976, to sharply divide the FBI and the foreign intelligence agencies. The FBI would collect within the United States; the foreign intelligence agencies would collect overseas.

Bobby Ray Inman

#49. We tend to think of human trafficking as a foreign issue, not something that could happen here in our own back yards. But it's a fast-growing problem in the United States, in every area, with no real defined demographic.

Lori Foster

#50. It seems to be Latin American destiny to always have the United States say 'amen.

Warren Eyster

#51. The provisions contained in this plan will ensure that the United States has the infrastructure necessary to meet energy needs through future decades, easing dependence on unpredictable foreign oil markets, and creating thousands of new jobs for American workers.

Ron Lewis

#52. I am often asked if, when I was secretary, I had problems with foreign men. That is not who I had problems with, because I arrived in a very large plane that said United States of America. I had more problems with the men in our own government.

Madeleine Albright

#53. In my home State of Texas, the Port of Houston operates as the United States' top port for foreign tonnage and our second largest for total tonnage, so I know how important this bill is for the protection of the American people.

Michael McCaul

#54. Our visits to the United States have brought huge benefits by helping attract foreign direct investment on a scale not previously seen in the north of Ireland.

Martin McGuinness

#55. When it comes to setting national priorities, determining threats, defining challenges, and fashioning and implementing foreign and defense policies, the United States and Europe have parted ways.

Robert Kagan

#56. In the United States, you might say every county has got its own separate system. There's not even one kind of ballot that you use all over the United States. We require that in a foreign country.

Jimmy Carter

#57. When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening foreign entity, it ignores the fact that, in our democracy, government is us.

Barack Obama

#58. Europe is very critical to the United States in the sense not only do we have a fourth of our exports there, but more importantly, a significant proportion of the foreign affiliate profits in fact, half of U.S. corporations, are in Europe.

Alan Greenspan

#59. The world spends two trillion dollars a year on military, and of that two trillion the United States spends one trillion. We have a bigger military than the rest of the world put together. We have 150 foreign military bases.

Bill Ayers

#60. The descendants of European immigrants do not govern the United States of America today. The foreign and domestic policies of the country are made by the Jews and their lackeys.

Julius Streicher

#61. no person of foreign birth, not a citizen of the Confederate States, shall be allowed to vote for any officer, civil or political, State or Federal.

Confederate States Of America

#62. You know, Arabs are critical of United States foreign policy, but they also associate the U.S. with democratic principles and opportunity.

Jehane Noujaim

#63. My view of foreign policy is that we need to be careful and circumspect about United States intervention in any foreign nation.

Michele Bachmann

#64. I am well aware of the facts presented by numerous security experts on the many ways in which the United States' digital networks have come under siege by cybercriminals and under daily assault by hackers in league with various foreign governments.

Rebecca MacKinnon

#65. In the United States there's not a lot of people interested in foreign language films. Every time, it's more difficult for foreign language films to survive here.

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

#66. As Commander in Chief of the United States Military, I will never send our sons and daughters and our brothers and sisters to die in a foreign land without telling the truth about why they're going there.

Howard Dean

#67. I wonder how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own.

Howard Zinn

#68. Why are they making rules that say my lover can stay in the United States if they're foreign or share my health care benefits because I'm straight - but if you're gay, you can't have that?

Natalie Portman

#69. For India, the links with the United States/Israel are the centrepiece of its foreign policy.

Tariq Ali

#70. It is important that the United States move with all deliberate speed to develop and get into usage alternative fuels that will allow us to end our dependence on foreign oil.

Virgil Goode

#71. [T]he States can best govern our home concerns and the general government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore ... never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold at market.

Thomas Jefferson

#72. Remember how he handled the Iran-contra Never Ending Scandal from Hell? He went on national television, the President of the United States, and said it wasn't his fault, because he was not aware, at the time, of what his foreign policy was.

Dave Barry

#73. The seriousness of being part of Operation Desert Storm-the first major foreign crisis for the United States after the end of the Cold War- was never lost upon us.

Carlos Wallace

#74. Let me remind you all that the first task of American foreign policy is to reduce threats to the United States.

Michael Mandelbaum

#75. As has been emphasized vigorously by foreign allies and by responsible leaders of former administrations and incumbent officeholders, there is no current danger to the United States from Baghdad.

Jimmy Carter

#76. The United States can no longer rely upon foreign nations such as China to bail us out of our economic irresponsibility. We must live within our means and implement creative, free-market solutions to put Americans back in jobs and to create economic opportunities.

Pete Sessions

#77. The President is of opinion that if Japan makes a treaty with the United States, all other foreign countries will make the same kind of a treaty, and Japan will be safe thereafter.

Townsend Harris

#78. You are, I am sure, aware that genuine popular support in the United States is required to carry out any Government policy, foreign or domestic. The American people make up their own minds and no governmental action can change it.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

#79. I readily admit I was not an expert on foreign policy but I was knowledgeable and I didn't need a man who was the Vice President of the United States and my opponent turning around and putting me down.

Geraldine Ferraro

#80. Originally, Congress provided in 1793 that all foreign coins circulating in the United States be legal tender. Indeed, foreign coins have been estimated to form 80 percent of American domestic specie circulation in 1800.

Murray Rothbard

#81. One of the foremost activities of the NSA's FAD, or Foreign Affairs Division, is to pressure or incentivize EU member states to change their laws to enable mass surveillance.

Edward Snowden

#82. Nothing in the constitutions of Western states requires them to get involved in every foreign conflict.

Daniel Pipes

#83. Bitumen, the new national staple, is redefining the character and destiny of Canada. Rapid development of the tar sands has created a foreign policy that favours the export of bitumen to the United States and lax immigration standards that champion the import of global bitumen workers.

Andrew Nikiforuk

#84. We have this unfortunate habit in the United States of dividing terrorism into different categories. External, foreign terrorism, which manifests itself overseas or in the United States, or domestic terrorism.

Malcolm Wrightson Nance

#85. When Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar was asked why there was so much animosity in her country towards the United States, she gave a one-word answer: "drones."

Medea Benjamin

#86. Bolivia historically made and still makes a living from natural resources. Before it was tin, but also silver, gold, and other minerals were plundered by many foreign countries. Europe after the United States.

Evo Morales

#87. America is harmless as an enemy but treacherous as a friend.

Bernard Lewis

#88. The Turkish, Arab and Chinese nationalists who built new nation-states out of the ruins of old empires scorned their old, decrepit rulers as much as they did the foreign imperialists who imposed free trade through gunboats.

Pankaj Mishra

#89. I believe the states can best govern our home concerns and the federal government our foreign ones.

Thomas Jefferson

#90. My father had been in the German Diplomatic Service, and although he had been in the United States since World War II and out of diplomacy, it was something that was very much talked about in the family. So when I went to college, it was always my intention to try to get into the Foreign Service.

Hermann Eilts

#91. He obtained from Congress the right to borrow from the people by selling to it the 'bonds' of States ... and the Government and the nation escaped the plots of the foreign financiers. They understood at once, that the United States would escape their grip. The death of Lincoln was resolved upon.

Otto Von Bismarck

#92. People ask if I miss it, but they don't understand that American culture is so ubiquitous that there's nothing to miss. I don't see myself moving back. It's not that I hate the United States. I just always thought it would be a shame not to live in a foreign country.

David Sedaris

#93. While America will always, I think, feel foreign to me, New York City is my home. This is where I can construct my own identity freely and reject labels imposed on me.

Raquel Cepeda

#94. The people of the United States will do anything for Latin America, except read about it.

James Barrett Reston

#95. We saw the president of the United States engage American troops in a fourth conflict in a foreign land. This is historic.

Michele Bachmann

#96. The National Security Council's real role is to coordinate the various activities of the government of the United States in the furtherance of American foreign policy.

Oliver North

#97. Foreign aid is neither a failure nor a panacea. It is, instead, an important tool of American policy that can serve the interests of the United States and the world if wisely administered.

Lee H. Hamilton

#98. The price of crude oil accounts for 55 percent of the price of a gallon of gasoline, driven by global supply and demand. The United States depends on foreign sources of oil for 62 percent of our nation's supply. By 2010, this is projected to jump to 75 percent.

Gary Miller

#99. If the United States is to protect itself from the economic and the political threats created by this excessive dependence, we must reduce our reliance on foreign energy sources and on foreign oil as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

John Shadegg

#100. I know that my Republican colleagues are as ashamed as I am that the United States is forced to borrow over $1 trillion from foreign nations to pay for our national priorities like reconstruction of the gulf coast and the war in Iraq.

Dennis Cardoza