Welcome to our collection of quotes by Condoleezza Rice. We hope you enjoy pondering them and please share widely.
Wikipedia Summary for Condoleezza Rice
Condoleezza "Condi" Rice ( KON-də-LEE-zə; born November 14, 1954) is an American diplomat, political scientist, civil servant, and professor who is the current director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Rice served as the 66th United States secretary of state from 2005 to 2009 and as the 20th national security advisor from 2001 to 2005. A member of the Republican Party, Rice was the first female African-American secretary of state and the first woman to serve as National Security Advisor. Until the election of Barack Obama as president in 2008, Rice and her predecessor, Colin Powell, were the highest-ranking African Americans in the history of the federal executive branch (by virtue of the secretary of state standing fourth in the presidential line of succession). Additionally, Rice was the highest-ranking African American woman in the history of the United States until the inauguration of Kamala Harris as vice president in 2021.
Rice was born in Birmingham, Alabama, and grew up while the South was racially segregated. She obtained her bachelor's degree from the University of Denver and her master's degree in political science from the University of Notre Dame. In 1981, she received a PhD from the School of International Studies at the University of Denver. She worked at the State Department under the Carter administration and served on the National Security Council as the Soviet and Eastern Europe affairs advisor to President George H. W. Bush during the dissolution of the Soviet Union and German reunification from 1989 to 1991. Rice later pursued an academic fellowship at Stanford University, where she later served as provost from 1993 to 1999. On December 17, 2000, she joined the Bush administration as President George W. Bush's national security advisor. In Bush's second term, she succeeded Colin Powell as Secretary of State. She was the second female secretary of state, after Madeleine Albright.
Following her confirmation as Secretary of State, Rice pioneered the policy of Transformational Diplomacy directed toward expanding the number of responsible democratic governments in the world and especially in the Greater Middle East. That policy faced challenges as Hamas captured a popular majority in Palestinian elections, and influential countries including Saudi Arabia and Egypt maintained authoritarian systems (with U.S. backing). While in the position, she chaired the Millennium Challenge Corporation's board of directors.
In March 2009, Rice returned to Stanford University as a political science professor and the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution. In September 2010, she became a faculty member of the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a director of its Global Center for Business and the Economy. In January 2020, it was announced that Rice would succeed Thomas W. Gilligan as the next director of the Hoover Institution on September 1, 2020. She is on the Board of Directors of Dropbox and Makena Capital Management, LLC.
Every life is worthy and every life is capable of greatness. We have an obligation to make sure that opportunity for greatness is there.
People are tired of being kept from the dignity that allows them to make their own choices.
I do think people have suggested that it would be a good thing if the reporting were accurate on Al-Jazeera and if it were not slanted in ways that appear to be at times just purely inaccurate.
I don't believe for a minute anybody allowed people to suffer because they are African Americans.
I have several favorite clothes designers, but I like to wear Akris, Oscar De La Renta and Giorgio Armani.
America is a remarkable place in that social attitudes change almost imperceptibly, and then you wake up the next day and they've changed. But they've been changing all the time.
If you are overdressed, it is a comment on them. If you are under dressed, it is a comment on you.
Diplomacy, if properly practiced, is not just talking for the sake of talking.
You know, I've never believed, in anything, that you had to have role models who looked like you to do something. If I'd been waiting for a black, female, soviet specialist role model, I'd be still waiting.
Education is transformational. It changes lives. That is why people work so hard to become educated and why education has always been the key to the American Dream, the force that erases arbitrary divisions of race and class and culture and unlocks every person's God-given potential.
Well, I didn't feel that I could do justice to this story of my parents and their generation, and all that they did to make it possible for me to be who I am, if I sort of just put it at the beginning of a book about my last eight years in foreign policy.
This system, built on free markets, free trade and free peoples and American protection, that's what got us from the end of World War II to the extraordinary events of the end of the Cold War and a system that was one of prosperity and peace for a lot of people, including for the United States.
To say that people around the world deserve the same, the same life that we have in the United States, the same freedoms that we have, that seems to me, humble. I think it's humble to say that the United States, which has been given so much, should give back.
Today's headlines and history's judgment are rarely the same. If you are too attentive to the former, you will most certainly not do the hard work of securing the latter.
There have been plenty of markers that show that this Iraq is a country that is worth the investment, because once it emerges as a country that is a stabilising factor, you will have a very different kind of Middle East.
Human beings are not perfect. Their institutions are not perfect, but they have to keep trying. And America has to help people keep trying.
Message and policy are very much a part, you know, two parts of the same coin.
There's no greater challenge and there is no greater honor than to be in public service.
Tocqueville talked about ceaseless agitation, citizens constantly use their institutions, constantly challenging them, constantly insisting upon their rights. It's also individuals taking responsibility for other individuals, recognition that no democracy works if they're weaklings.
I hope that all of us who were fortunate enough to have benefited will put our time, our resources and our efforts into making sure that kids, particularly kids without means, have a way to achieve.
It's good to have female or minority role models. But the important thing is to have mentors who care about you, and they come in all colors.
We have our differences with Russia. And some of those differences produce conflict. But by no means is this the Soviet Union. We have far more areas of cooperation with Russia than we have areas of conflict.
Well, of course, all of the statistics say there are fewer eligible black men in my circle. But I've never thought of it that way. I believe that if the right person came into my life that would have been terrific.
We can't afford to leave Afghanistan to the Taliban and the terrorists.
We can have a new vision, one even greater than the system they gave us after World War II. Everyone can pursue happiness and freedom and peace.
When I went off to college, I was expecting to be a concert musician. In music school I heard all of these kids who were just unbelievable. And I understand that you can be very, very good, but there's something that separates very, very good from great, and I knew that I wasn't great.
It is a longstanding principle that sitting national security advisers do not testify before the Congress.
For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region, here in the Middle East, and we achieved neither.
You do have to keep in mind as you're going through extraordinarily difficult circumstances, that if you stay true, true to your values, if you stay true to your principles, if you believe in these values, then you can work in that context to right policies that may not be working.
I think my father thought I might be president of the United States. I think he would've been satisfied with secretary of state. I'm a foreign policy person and to have a chance to serve my country as the nation's chief diplomat at a time of peril and consequence, that was enough.
I think there are still unanswered questions about Benghazi. I think there are unanswered questions, and they could be easily answered. But I think they need to be answered.
Well, there are many things, whenever you look back, that you would've done differently. We're all human. We do our best at the time. I really wish that we had passed a comprehensive immigration bill because that would've really helped our country. We came close, but we couldn't.
I really wish that we had passed a comprehensive immigration bill because that would've really helped our country.
One of the signs that things are going reasonably well for democracy is that we have the states where they're closer to the people. Federalism is a strength. We have all of these civil society institutions -- civil society is a very important hallmark of democracy.
If it is not possible for me to go somewhere and to be willing to encounter people with different views, then I'm really not doing my job.
I think our dependence on foreign oil is a real problem, potential Achilles heel, and we have to do something about it.
Every good leader is part manager and every good manager is part leader.
As secretary of state it's been an enormous honor to represent this great country that I love so much -- I have really seen that our great strengths are in the ability of people to reach their potential here.
I remember classes in college where the professor was espousing certain theories about how blacks were inherently less intelligent. But I learned a long time ago to give people the benefit of the doubt, not to assume that somebody was reacting to you because of race.
I play a lot chamber music.As for something that's hard for me to play, before I leave this Earth I'm hoping to play Brahms' Second Piano Concerto.
It's so much a part of me that it's almost hard to describe myself in the absence of it. I know that for me it means asking for guidance, and that in the toughest times there's a personal savior that I can rely on. And I'm very grateful to my parents for giving me that.
I think the word of the United States has been as good as gold in its international dealings and its agreements.
My job is to try to advance American foreign policy, to try to advance the president's agenda on democracy and human rights.
Even when you cherish democratic ideals, it is never easy to turn them into effective democratic institutions. This process will take decades.
We can't live true to our set of values unless American educational system is strong. I really believe that if we don't get that right we will not compete because we won't believe that our people can compete, and we'll turn inward. We won't lead. That will be bad for the world.
To see an African-American elected president means that this country is really finally coming full circle from the birth defect of slavery.
Truly remarkable leadership is not just about motivating others to follow, it's about inspiring them to become leaders themselves and setting the stage for even greater opportunities for future generations.
Multiethnic character of America is very attractive to people. They also see a place where you get ahead, not because of where you came from, but because of where you want to go.
Most middle-class Americans, even working-class Americans, encounter each other across racial lines all the time, but it gets really hard-core when you get into that witches' brew that is the combination of race and poverty.
I laugh almost everyday. I have a good sense of humor, so I'm always finding something funny.
But we do have confidence in our institutions. We are not Russia. We have an executive that is constrained. We have a legislature that is real. We have a press that is free. We have courts that are independent. This is not Russia.
Your passion may be hard to spot, so keep an open mind and keep searching.
It takes courage to set priorities because doing so is an admission that American policy cannot be all things to all people -- or rather to all interest groups.
I think it's very humble to believe that there is no man, woman or child who should live in tyranny. That people who say, well, maybe Arabs just aren't ready for democracy or maybe Africans just are going to have corrupt governments, that seems to me arrogant.
Fortunately, I started very young, so I read music very well. And my favorite composers to play are Brahms and Mozart.
What we will not wait for is that particular nexus of terrorism, weapons of mass destruction that is extremism, and the technology to come together in a way that is harmful to the United States.
I've speculated about what my life might have been like as a musician, but I'm afraid I came to the conclusion that I probably would've either been teaching piano or maybe gotten to play at Nordstrom's department store.
There is nothing better than being in a classroom with really, really brilliant students, and opening up new worlds to them. That's what I love doing.
I've found my place in life, that I'm passionate about, my talents and my passion have merged, and I'm trying to do the best that I can.
I use the word power broadly. Even more important than military and economic power is the power of ideas, the power of compassion, and the power of hope.
I love sports. I play golf now, which is relatively new for me. I only took it up about five years ago. I also like playing piano, and I love being with my family and friends.
I'm very proud that we stood for the proposition that no man, woman or child should ever have to live in tyranny. We believed in democracy and promoted it.
I'm very proud that President George W. Bush took on AIDS relief. It was the largest single response by any country to a major international health crisis, and there are millions of people who are alive today in Africa and other developing countries because of that program.
Once a month I play with a chamber music quartet. I play almost no solo music anymore because I so enjoy the interaction. The members of my quartet have become some of my best friends and so I really enjoy it now in ways that I didn't before.
I believe that Reverend Florine Thompson's hit on something. My parents, I and a lot of my friends growing up in that community had tremendous drive.
I think the Saudis are not only not supporting terrorism, they're fighting it. And why? Because it is in their interests to fight it. We don't agree on everything, but I do believe that the Saudis for their benefit, they're fighting terrorism and fighting it quite aggressively.
I firmly believe you never should spend your time being the former anything.
I've always said that I expected to grow up and get married like any nice southern girl, but the fact is you don't get married in the abstract. You find someone that you'd like to be married to.
Democracy is the most realistic way for diverse peoples to resolve their differences, and share power, and heal social divisions without violence or repression.
When are we going to stop making excuses for the terrorists and saying that somebody is making them do it? No, these are simply evil people who want to kill.
What I tell student athletes is first of all, you've made good choices this far in order to be able to be in college and to be an athlete. Keep making good choices.
I don't like anything that's just an escape. To me the best part of golf is that, unlike my tennis game, I can actually get better. I've probably reached my plateau in tennis, but in golf I have a lot of room for improvement. I really enjoy working on my game. I like practicing. I chart my rounds.
This is not 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia, where Russia can threaten its neighbors, occupy a capital, overthrow a government, and get away with it. Things have changed.