Quotes About Foreign Policy

#1. When it comes to our foreign policy, you seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policies of the 1950s and the economic policies of the 1920s.

Barack Obama

#2. I am in favor of a foreign policy that will cultivate relations of peace with all nations, and I will never give my influence, either as a private citizen or a public servant, for war, so long as it can be honorably avoided.

Ambrose Burnside

#3. This foreign policy stuff is a little frustrating.

George W. Bush

#4. If diplomacy is the art of persuading others to act as we would wish, effective foreign policy requires that we comprehend why others act as they do

Madeleine K. Albright

#5. Every damn President since I can remember has been so in love with foreign policy that they're just like a schoolboy with a new girl.

Cleveland Amory

#6. The issue here is not gonna be a list of accomplishments. As you said yourself, Steve, you know, I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president - with the possible exceptions of Johnson, F.D.R., and Lincoln.

Barack Obama

#7. Democratic candidate John Kerry on Tuesday chose fellow Senator John Edwards to be his running mate. Asked about Edwards' lack of foreign policy experience, Kerry revealed his new campaign slogan, 'I Promise Not to Die.'

Dennis Miller

#8. To win the war on terror, we must know who our friends are and where our enemies are hiding. We can't continue fighting terrorism using the same foreign policy blueprints that were in place before September 11th.

Evan Bayh

#9. ."I don't have the foggiest idea about what I think about international, foreign policy."

George W. Bush

#10. Common foreign policy is completely unnecessary. The various European countries have widely differing priorities, goals and prejudices. It would be wrong to force them all to follow the same course.

Vaclav Klaus

#11. The civil war in Rwanda and other ethnic massacres were an integral part of US foreign policy, carefully staged in accordance with precise strategic and economic objectives.

Michel Chossudovsky

#12. Our two-party system is a fraud, a sham, a delusion. On foreign policy, trade, immigration, Big Government, we have one-party government, one party press; and conservatives are being played for suckers.

Pat Buchanan

#13. When you look at where the Democratic field is going relative to foreign policy, they are increasingly moving away from a policy of pre-emptive self-defense that the president has adopted since September 11.

Ed Gillespie

#14. Like how the government of General Abacha was using its foreign policy to legitimize itself in the eyes of other African countries.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#15. The American foreign policy trauma of the sixties and seventies was caused by applying valid principles to unsuitable conditions.

Henry A. Kissinger

#16. In 2007, early in the improbable presidential candidacy of Barack Obama, the young first-term senator began a series of foreign-policy speeches that seemed too general to provide a guide to what he might do if elected.

Elliott Abrams

#17. The Democrats just don't have a foreign policy that they're willing to defend, that they're willing to use to take down the president's. We're dealing with the power of suggestion here.

Chris Matthews

#18. I believe that "government", as we know it today, should pull out of most things except for law enforcement and justice, national defense and foreign policy, and let the private sector, a "Grameenized private sector", a social-consciousness-driven private sector, take over their other functions.

Muhammad Yunus

#19. It's Russia some people would like to get rid of. They are still afraid of our nuclear deterrent. We have our own foreign policy whether they like it or not.

Vladimir Putin

#20. My job is to try to advance American foreign policy, to try to advance the president's agenda on democracy and human rights.

Condoleezza Rice

#21. After Secretary Clinton announced in January 2010 that Internet freedom would be a major pillar of U.S. foreign policy, the State Department decided to take what Clinton calls a 'venture capital' approach to the funding of tools, research, public information projects, and training.

Rebecca MacKinnon

#22. 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

#23. Our economic strength at home is key to our diplomatic and military strength abroad. We should be investing far more in education as well as our technological and economic development so that we have the resources to support our foreign policy.

Ruben Gallego

#24. No Western government has ever played the long-term in terms of foreign policy.

Damian Lewis

#25. 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

#26. I don't want to be creating new foreign policy for - for my country or in any way to distance myself in the foreign policy of - of our nation, but we respect the right of a nation to defend itself.

Mitt Romney

#27. Reasonable, even intelligent people can, and frequently do, disagree on how best to achieve peace in the Middle East, but, peace must be the goal of our foreign policy tools, whether they be by the stick or by the carrot.

Nick Rahall

#28. The lesson of the last year is this: foreign policy can't be managed through the politics of personality, and our President would do well to take note of an observation John F. Kennedy made once he was in office - that all of the world's problems aren't his predecessor's fault.

Sarah Palin

#29. I would never use God to promote foreign policy decisions. I recognize that in the eyes of an almighty, I am a lowly sinner, and I ask for strength and wisdom and I pray for calmness when the seas are storming, and I pray for others.

George W. Bush

#30. Foreign policy should not be justified through making oneself feel good, but through results that have tangible consequences.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

#31. In terms of our foreign policy, that's where we made a mistake after 9/11. Everyone's going, "Why, why, why," and there wasn't any investigation or learning from any of what we had been doing up to that time that had set us up.

Susan Sarandon

#32. Congress has shortchanged not only foreign aid but foreign policy. A mistaken notion that diplomats are unimportant and hence undeserving of support grips conservative legislators, especially.

Anthony Lewis

#33. There are no shortcuts to victory. We must commit ourselves to the slow, painstaking work of foreign policy day by day and year by year.

Richard Lugar

#34. I'm obviously aware that people are quite focused on the economy rather than foreign policy issues, but that is something that should and can be altered as people see the nature of the threats around the world that we face.

John Bolton

#35. His experience of the past two decades in foreign policy had also taught him that time often resolved the issues of the hour.

Jon Meacham

#36. Barack Obama inherited a bankrupt economy, a bankrupt government, and a bankrupt foreign policy.

Thomas P.M. Barnett

#37. I want to make it clear publicly that I expect more candor from this Administration during the next four years, particularly with members on the Foreign Relations Committee so that we can maintain a bipartisan foreign policy.

George Voinovich

#38. Bush promised a foreign policy of humility and a domestic policy of compassion. He has given us a foreign policy of arrogance and a domestic policy that is cynical, myopic and cruel.

Joe Klein

#39. I am ... willing to make it clear that American foreign policy must uphold the sanctity of international treaties. That is the cornerstone on which all relations between nations must rest.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

#40. Secretary Clinton has dramatically changed the face of U.S. foreign policy globally for the good. But I wish she had been unleashed more by the White House.

Richard Armitage

#41. I think President Obama has always been a little bit underestimated. Some of the things he's done with foreign policy have been unassailable. Getting us out of Iraq, killing Osama Bin Laden.

Willie Geist

#42. Politically, foreign policy never matters until it matters, and then it matters a lot.

Marco Rubio

#43. Values-oriented foreign policy of the free world would be much better, supported by the self-awareness of being on the right side of history.

Garry Kasparov

#44. One of the problems with Marco's [Rubio] foreign policy is he has far too often supported Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama undermining governments in the Middle East that have helped radical Islamic terrorists.

Ted Cruz

#45. White House and State Department foreign-policy experts are overwhelmingly directed towards military and diplomatic issues, not development issues.

Jeffrey Sachs

#46. I don't much believe in bumper sticker characterizations of foreign policy.

John Bolton

#47. The international community lies at the center of the Obama foreign policy. Unfortunately, it is a fiction. There is no such thing. Different countries have different histories, geographies, necessities, and interests. There's no natural, inherent, or enduring international community.

Charles Krauthammer

#48. Do not allow Democrats anywhere near foreign policy. Not even to keep them away from domestic policy. It's a mistake to ask those who don't even like democracy to defend it.

Ann Coulter

#49. American foreign policy is now one huge big mystery. Simply put, the administration is trying to lead the world with a feel-good foreign policy.

Tom DeLay

#50. 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

#51. The platform we had in Dallas, the 1984 Republican platform, all the ideas we supported there - from tax policy, to foreign policy; from individual rights, to neighborhood security - are things that Jefferson Davis and his people believed in.

Trent Lott

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

Simon Cottee

#53. So in terms of the global economic footprint, let's just say China within the next decade and a bit is likely to emerge as the world's largest economy. Obviously its foreign policy and security policy footprint increases and that creates both challenges and opportunities for us all.

Kevin Rudd

#54. His eyes were caught in the headlights of something - foreign policy?

Lorrie Moore

#55. I don't think that experience is a very useful or convincing attribute for a sensible foreign policy. Henry Kissinger had a lot of experience.

Noam Chomsky

#56. I can't talk about foreign policy like anyone who's spent their life reading and learning foreign policy. But as a citizen in a democracy, it's very important that I participate in that.

Ron Silver

#57. In foreign policy you have to wait twenty-five years to see how it comes out.

James Reston

#58. 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

#59. Foreign policy is a little bit like a guy who goes to Las Vegas. If you win too much, then you eventually bet the mortgage. You start to think you are infallible.

Peter Beinart

#60. Asking Senator Fulbright's advice on foreign policy is like asking the Boston Strangler to massage your neck.

Spiro T. Agnew

#61. The people I see on bicycles look like organic-gardening zealots who advocate federal regulation of bedtime and want American foreign policy to be dictated by UNICEF. These people should be confined.

P. J. O'Rourke

#62. Foreign policy isn't something that is great and big, it's common sense and humanity as it applies to my affairs and yours.

Ernest Bevin

#63. Words summarize the American philosophy of life: Live and let live; Let's make a deal. 8 words summarize American foreign policy: We're better than you; Do it our way.

Gary North

#64. I believe in a America first foreign policy, that far too often President [Barack] Obama and Hillary Clinton - and, unfortunately, more than a few Republicans - have gotten distracted from the central focus of keeping this country safe.

Ted Cruz

#65. When I was in college, I became interested in various aspects of foreign policy and international relations. Even as a kid, I was interested in what I call, loosely speaking, forbidden knowledge.

Barry Eisler

#66. U.S. assistance provides the Jordanian government needed flexibility to pursue policies that are of critical importance to U.S. national security and to foreign policy objectives in the Middle East.

Richard Armitage

#67. We were told that we were attacked on 9/11 because the terrorists hate our freedoms and democracy ... not for the real reason: because the Arab Muslims who attacked us hate our Middle Eastern foreign policy.

Cindy Sheehan

#68. Our theme is, 'Respected abroad, strong at home.' What do we mean by that? Basically that we want a strong emphasis on affordable health care and education, safer at home, positive themes. And respected abroad
a foreign policy with alliances.

Bill Richardson

#69. Separation of powers is a problem for foreign policy.

Condoleezza Rice

#70. Foreign policy is inseparable from domestic policy now. Is terrorism foreign policy or domestic policy? It's both. It's the same with crime, with the economy, climate change.

David Miliband

#71. Any time someone says "that's it, I'm leaving" I ask them whether they'd prefer to live under US domestic policy, or US foreign policy. As bad as things get inside an empire, they're usually worse in the protectorates.

Jamie Zawinski

#72. President [Barack]Obama benefits from the shared experience and wisdom of top national security and foreign policy advisers, many of them career professionals.

Chris Matthews

#73. In the Senate, there is a wide spectrum of views on foreign policy.

Ted Cruz

#74. We also think this is a reminder of the long tradition of bipartisan foreign policy that has been the hallmark of America at moments of greatest need, and that's the kind of spirit that we hope will be reflected in our administration.

Barack Obama

#75. Many Americans, and many more people around the world, have been outraged by what they see as President George W. Bush's radical reordering of American foreign policy.

Stephen Kinzer

#76. Our foreign policy has made a wreck of this planet. I'm always in Africa ... And when I go to these places I see American policy written on the walls of oppression everywhere.

Harry Belafonte

#77. American strategic [nuclear] forces do not exist solely for the purpose of deterring a Soviet nuclear threat or attack against the U.S. itself. Instead, they are intended to support U.S. foreign policy.

Colin S. Gray

#78. Foreign policy is conducted for the convenience and enjoyment of people in Washington.

John Kenneth Galbraith

#79. Additionally, borrowing a page from U.S. foreign policy, I decided to send a message to a government that was becoming increasingly hostile.

Timothy McVeigh

#80. For me, it's more about being there, bearing witness to history, bearing witness to what's happening, what our country, the position our country is taking overseas. I want policy-makers to see the fruits of their decisions, basically, and to try and influence foreign policy.

Lynsey Addario

#81. Foreign policy simply cannot be judged by today's headlines that chalk up victories and defeats like so many box scores in the sports sections.

Condoleezza Rice

#82. 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

#83. So I think that our foreign policy, the president's strong and principled leadership when it comes to the war against terror and foreign policy is going to be an asset.

Ed Gillespie

#84. I get these lightweights like Marco Rubio, he gets up and says'Oh, Donald Trump didn't talk about foreign policy'.

Donald Trump

#85. Obama was expected to restore an ethical sheen to post-9/11 foreign policy, but he has intensified drone warfare in Yemen and Pakistan, pursued whistle-blowers, and failed to close down Guantanamo.

Pankaj Mishra

#86. I didn't make a political speech outside of my state for 20 years. And I just focused almost exclusively on my initiatives for national crime legislation, foreign policy issues ...

Joe Biden

#87. 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

#88. The great divide in American foreign policy thinking is between those who believe in paper and those who believe in power.

Charles Krauthammer

#89. The reason I made women's issues central to American foreign policy, was not because I was a feminist, but because we know that societies are more stable if women are politically and economically empowered.

Madeleine Albright

#90. The Hillary Clinton foreign policy has cost America thousands of lives and trillions of dollars - and unleashed ISIS across the world. No Secretary of State has been more wrong, more often, and in more places than Hillary Clinton.

Donald Trump

#91. It has become starkly apparent to me that we lack any sort of strategic foreign policy view, and when I say 'we,' I mean the country in general, but in particular, the Republican Party.

Marco Rubio

#92. War challenges virtually every other institution of society - the justice and equity of its economy, the adequacy of its political systems, the energy of its productive plant, the bases, wisdom and purposes of its foreign policy.

Walter Millis

#93. I know the power of the Israeli lobby and the other lobbies, but we need a foreign policy that puts our own country first.

Pat Buchanan

#94. With a foreign policy appropriately rooted in some sense of humanitarian decency, the Central African crisis will not be easily ignored by American policymakers. It screams for remedy.

Michael Johns

#95. There was a degree of interventionism in American foreign policy, the notion that we must be the superpower and we have to intervene everywhere, that I think makes no sense.

Barney Frank

#96. 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

#97. The principles that should guide American foreign policy are simple: the world is safer when America leads, only strength ensures peace and freedom, and America must stand with its allies and challenge its adversaries.

Kevin McCarthy

#98. The only foreign policy advice I heard from China was when they said to Sudan, 'Don't go back to war.' That's all they said. They didn't push anything else.

Emmanuel Jal

#99. The Conservative Party has one overriding concern in foreign policy, and that is the growth of Communist power and influence in the world, and the dangers it can bring for all of us.

Reginald Maudling

#100. Their foreign policy is so disjointed, confusing, and chaotic that, really, people need to reexamine those who want to be involved in every war.

Barack Obama