Top 100 Quotes About Foreign Policy
#1. Pakistan's foreign policy should be discussed on the floor of the Parliament, not behind closed doors.
Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri
#2. American decision-makers must understand how damaging a foreign policy that privileges order and profit over justice really is in the long term.
Samantha Power
#3. I really think [the Bush Administration]'s foreign policy agenda is to spread irony through the world.
Jon Stewart
#4. When it comes to foreign policy, it is important to remember that politics stops at the water's edge.
Hillary Clinton
#5. The American temptation is to believe that foreign policy is a subdivision of psychiatry.
Henry A. Kissinger
#6. Bush humble foreign policy was hijacked into nation-building.
Ron Paul
#8. Throughout the 20th century, the Republican Party benefited from a non-interventionist foreign policy. Think of how Eisenhower came in to stop the Korean War. Think of how Nixon was elected to stop the mess in Vietnam.
Ron Paul
#9. [A]n Obama presidency would be an amusing approximation of the Carter administration, complete with vaporous moralizing and foreign policy bungling.
Emmett Tyrrell
#10. Yes the Jews do many foul things and they distort our foreign policy but not everything that goes bad can be blamed on the Jews.
Tom Metzger
#11. I find it amusing that those who helped to authorize and engineer the biggest foreign policy disaster in our generation are now criticizing me for making sure that we are on the right battlefield and not the wrong battlefield in the war against terrorism.
Barack Obama
#12. But if we are to be told by a foreign Power ... what we shall do, and what we shall not do, we have Independence yet to seek, and have contended hitherto for very little.
George Washington
#13. Effective foreign policy has always involved the use of both sticks and carrots, and finding the right balance between the two is more art than science.
Hillary Rodham Clinton
#14. Barack Obama, foreign policy wizard. I just have to laugh.
Rush Limbaugh
#15. I'm a big fan of Rand Paul; he and I are good friends. I don't agree with him on foreign policy.
Ted Cruz
#16. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's strategy is to lead from behind. It sounds like what he is outlining is not to lead at all. We cannot continue to outsource foreign policy. We must lead. We are the most powerful nation in the world. We need to begin to act like it, again.
Marco Rubio
#17. Let me remind you all that the first task of American foreign policy is to reduce threats to the United States.
Michael Mandelbaum
#18. Sound foreign policy is more than arms control, foreign aid and paying (United Nations) dues.
John McCain
#19. I'm a lot less concerned with Bill Clinton's escapades decades ago than I am with Hillary Clinton's consistently wrong record when it comes to foreign policy, when it comes to domestic policy.
Ted Cruz
#20. The doctrine of preemption has a long and distinguished history in the history of American foreign policy.
John Lewis Gaddis
#21. I wasn't thinking about my pension plan until about two years ago. When I was in my twenties, the idea that you'd be thinking of taking a job based on its health-care policy was completely foreign. But these days young people are thinking about these things.
Mary Gordon
#22. It is our policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.
George Washington
#23. Our recent history should have made one thing clear. Women's rights are human rights. Any foreign policy that fails to recognize this effectively dehumanizes half the human race.
Jack Holland
#24. Presidents are not only the country's principal policy chief, shaping the nation's domestic and foreign agendas, but also the most visible example of our values.
Robert Dallek
#25. 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
#26. In foreign policy, the only thing worse than not doing something is doing something that fails or makes the situation worse.
Kathleen Troia McFarland
#27. The sad thing is, our foreign policy WILL change eventually, as Rome's did, when all budgetary and monetary tricks to fund it are exhausted.
Ron Paul
#28. Whatever it is that the government does, sensible Americans would prefer that the government does it to somebody else. This is the idea behind foreign policy.
P. J. O'Rourke
#29. I think most Americans believe that although it's better not to use military force if you can avoid it, that the world simply doesn't provide us the luxury of giving away military force as an important tool of foreign policy.
Robert Kagan
#30. Peace will never be won if men reserve for war their greatest efforts, Peace, too, requires well-directed and sustained sacrificial endeavor. Given that, we can, I believe, achieve the great goal of our foreign policy, that of enabling our people to enjoy in peace the blessings of liberty.
John Foster Dulles
#31. That means following a very restrictive fiscal and monetary policy which will squeeze the monopolies and cut their subsidies. On the micro level we will allow other economic agents, both domestic and foreign, to compete with them.
Vaclav Klaus
#32. I don't just denounce suicide bombers. I denounce those governments which use indiscriminate slaughter to advance their foreign policy.
Ken Livingstone
#33. Our superhero foreign policy draws rivers of taxpayer dollars toward the center, empowering Washington at the expense of local governments. It also empowers the president at the expense of Congress in ways that upset the balance that the authors of the Constitution took great pains to design.
Ian Bremmer
#34. It is an ambassador's duty to stand up for his nation's foreign policy in any era and under any government whatsoever. Ambassadors are, in the full meaning of the term, titled spies.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#35. I'm going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated.
John McCain
#36. I consider myself neither liberal nor conservative when it comes to foreign policy.
Peter Landesman
#37. There are differences of opinion, especially when it comes to economic and financial policy. But when it comes to foreign and especially immigration policy, we are in agreement. No other countries in Europe are closer to each other in this regard than Italy and Germany.
Paolo Gentiloni
#38. The State Department desperately needs to be vigorously harnessed. It has too big a role to play in the formulation of foreign policy, and foreign policy is too important to be left up to foreign service officers.
Evan G. Galbraith
#39. For India, the links with the United States/Israel are the centrepiece of its foreign policy.
Tariq Ali
#40. We are aware that in 2005 our efforts to preserve the stability and prestige of the Republic of Bulgaria in the area of foreign policy, and our efforts to attain fully our strategic goals will be mostly contingent upon the way we address our domestic priorities.
Georgi Parvanov
#41. The tragedy of Wilsonianism is that it bequeathed to the twentieth century's decisive power an elevated foreign policy doctrine unmoored from a sense of history or geopolitics.
Henry Kissinger
#42. Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.
Henry Kissinger
#43. I see this piece of legislation as essentially being a declaration of virtual war. It is giving the President tremendous powers to pursue war efforts against a sovereign nation ... I think it is another example of a flawed foreign policy that we have followed for a good many decades.
Ron Paul
#44. Iran should not be denied the human right to knowledge ... the fear of America is Iran's attitude to Israel, and the cornerstone of America's foreign policy is the protection of Israel ... If Iran believes in Allah, and if Iran believes in the power of Allah, Iran can't be frightened by America.
Louis Farrakhan
#45. Facts are rarely self-explanatory; their significance, analysis, and interpretation - at least in the foreign policy world - depend on context and relevance.
Henry Kissinger
#46. President Obama has earned my vote on the basis of his excellent judicial appointments, his consensus-building foreign policy and the improvements he has brought about in the disastrous economy he inherited.
Alan Dershowitz
#47. We have a prime minister, I'm the foreign minister, I'm trying to get on with the job of doing Australia's foreign policy.
Kevin Rudd
#48. Too often in Washington we tend to see foreign policy as an abstraction, with little understanding of what we are committing our country to: the complications and consequences of endeavors.
Chuck Hagel
#49. I got into journalism not to be a journalist but to try to change American foreign policy. I'm a corny person. I was a dreamer predating my journalistic life, so I got into journalism as a means to try to change the world.
Samantha Power
#50. Foreign policy often involved nothing more than the decision whom to make war upon.
Peter Heather
#52. China has been committed to the independent foreign policy of peace and has developed friendship and cooperation with all countries on the basis of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence.
Hu Jintao
#53. In State of the Union addresses, I always look at the foreign policy and military parts first, which are generally pretty minimal.
Phil Klay
#54. I don't think he should make foreign policy on the basis of peak,but I don't think it can be overstated that Israel has been an embattled democracy that has enjoyed the bipartisan and overwhelming support of Americans. It has been a moral force.
Mark Shields
#55. Foreign policy deals across time as well as space.
William Pfaff
#56. America is a unique place. The value part of American foreign policy is something I think is very laudable, but it is uniquely American. And it is part of what makes America special.
Michael Oren
#57. The Mars Polar Lander has been quieter than George W. Bush after a foreign policy question.
David Letterman
#58. I'm a war president. I make decisions here in the Oval Office and foreign policy matters with war on my mind.
George W. Bush
#59. Our foreign policy needs to support our energy, economic, defense and domestic policies. It all falls within the arch of national interest. There will be windows of opportunity, but they will open and close quickly.
Chuck Hagel
#60. My view of foreign policy is that we need to be careful and circumspect about United States intervention in any foreign nation.
Michele Bachmann
#62. In economics, we borrowed from the Bourbons; in foreign policy, we drew on themes fashioned by the nomad warriors of the Eurasian steppes. In spiritual matters, we emulated the braying intolerance of our archenemies, the Shite fundamentalists.
Barbara Ehrenreich
#64. You know, Arabs are critical of United States foreign policy, but they also associate the U.S. with democratic principles and opportunity.
Jehane Noujaim
#65. U.S. foreign policy is Manichaean. It's like a Hollywood movie. You have to know who has the white hat and who has the black hat and then go against the black hat.
Carlos Fuentes
#66. If there is one instance in which a foreign policy I pursued met with unambiguous failure, it was my policy on German reunification.
Margaret Thatcher
#67. I mean, like a lot of kids growing up in the early seventies, I was fed Dr. Kissinger with my Fruit Loops. He was the Dr. Ruth of American foreign policy, and the model statesman.
Eugene Jarecki
#68. You don't need a foreign policy expert to tell you empty threats and hollow promises don't work. Ask any parent of a rebellious teenager. If you don't make good on the threats, you're asking for worse behavior next time.
Kathleen Troia McFarland
#69. Soviet foreign policy turns out to be as "imperialist" as that of the czars. The Kremlin has betrayed the revolution.
William L. Shirer
#70. Well, human security is a concept that I am very committed to enshrining in American foreign policy.
Hillary Clinton
#71. If somebody wants to sit down with me for an hour and interview me and ask me any question about my record, my policies, my foreign policy experience, my domestic policy experience, I'm willing to do that.
John Kasich
#72. Unlike George Bush and his friends at the big oil companies, I'm going to work for a real energy policy for this country that decreases America's dependence on foreign oil and helps lower the costs to American families.
John F. Kerry
#73. It is my view that we cannot conduct foreign policy at the extremes.
Joe Biden
#74. The Lindsey Graham via foreign policy is going to beat Rand Paul's libertarian view of foreign policy. It will beat Barack Obama's view of foreign policy. It will beat Hillary Clinton's view of foreign policy.
Lindsey Graham
#75. As it stands, our patrols and bases are just targets, and the more firepower we use, the more enemies we make.
Daniel Suarez
#76. In Haig's presence, Kissinger referred pointedly to military men as "dumb, stupid animals to be used" as pawns for foreign policy.
Bob Woodward
#77. The United Nations had to be the cornerstone of our foreign policy.
Joseph P. Lash
#78. I liked Donald's Trump speech on foreign policy. What he's showing is that his fundamental views are solid, and that there's an intellectual basis for this, an economic basis for what he's saying, and that can lead him to victory.
Jeff Sessions
#79. Part of the French political class is realising that there is are large number of Muslim people coming from the ghettos who want to make themselves heard, politically, especially about foreign policy issues. Its electoral weight can bring back to the forefront the Palestinian issue.
Tariq Ramadan
#80. Graham Greene, as I understand it, was quite outspoken in his criticism of American foreign policy.
Brendan Fraser
#81. I think that Joe Biden is qualified in many respects. But I do point out that he's been wrong on many foreign policy and national security issues, which is supposed to be his strength.
John McCain
#82. Realism in foreign policy is made up of a clear set of values, since difficult foreign policy decisions are often decided with the narrowest of majorities. Without any sense of what is right and wrong, one would drown in a flood of difficult and pragmatic decisions.
Henry A. Kissinger
#83. My father is an economist who specialized in foreign food policy, and my mother worked for AID, a branch of the State Department, so food in regards to world affairs was talked about a lot.
Jennifer Gilmore
#84. I believe that this president [George W. Bush], regrettably, rushed us into a war, made decisions about foreign policy, pushed alliances away. And, as a result, America is now bearing this extraordinary burden where we are not as safe as we ought to be.
John F. Kerry
#85. We do not have the God-given right to shape every nation in our image or as we choose.
Robert McNamara
#86. Street Crime is the only logical response to America's drug policy just as terrorism is the only logical response to America's foreign policy
Tom Robbins
#87. The goal of Australian foreign policy should be to promote the maximum harmony between the U.S. and China.
John Howard
#88. U.S. foreign policy is akin to government-sponsored terrorism these day. It was not a mistake that there was a huge security stand down on September 11 last year. I am SOLO. I will continue to disrupt at the highest levels.
Gary McKinnon
#89. I see little hope for a peaceful world until men are excluded from the realm of foreign policy altogether and all decisions concerning international relations are reserved for women, preferably married ones.
W. H. Auden
#90. Many American pundits and foreign policy experts love to depict themselves as crusaders for human rights, but it almost always takes the form of condemning other governments, never their own.
Glenn Greenwald
#91. Everything in our foreign and domestic policy is a question of issue for the American people to vote on.
John Dingell
#92. [Alternative energy] will make us less dependent on foreign oil. It would make us more secure in our future. It would mean that our foreign policy could be a reflection of our values and our other interests, and not just that.
William J. Clinton
#93. I'm proud of the fact that I stood up early and unequivocally in opposition to Bush's foreign policy. That opposition hasn't changed.
Barack Obama
#94. The fundamental question is: 'Will I be a successful president when it comes to foreign policy?' I will be, but until I'm the president, it's going to be hard for me to verify that I think I'll be more effective.
George W. Bush
#96. International incidents must not be allowed to shape foreign policy, foreign policy must shape the incidents.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#97. Issues of foreign policy have a place in every election for President.
Barbra Streisand
#98. We on our part will stick to our independent foreign policy of peace, acting forever as a strong defender of world peace and a persistent proponent of common development.
Jinato Hu
#99. Europeans have always thought of U.S. presidents as either naive, as they did with Jimmy Carter, or as cowboys, as they did with Lyndon Johnson, and held them in contempt in either case.
George Friedman
#100. I expect to see trade wars, foreign policy disasters, a few race riots, a decrease in personal liberty, higher taxes, higher inflation and probably, economic collapse. The silver lining is, secession will probably become more feasible.
Charley Reese
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