Madeleine Albright
Madeleine Albright
Madeleine Jana Korbel Albright is an American politician and diplomat. She is the first woman to have become the United States Secretary of State. She was nominated by U.S. President Bill Clinton on December 5, 1996, and was unanimously confirmed by a U.S. Senate vote of 99–0. She was sworn in on January 23, 1997...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth15 May 1937
CitySmichov, Czech Republic
CountryUnited States of America
I don't think people should think of women's issues as auxiliary issues - they are central.
Our strategic dialogue with China can both protect American interests and uphold our principles, provided we are honest about our differences on human rights and other issues and provided we use a mix of targeted incentives and sanctions to narrow these differences.
If you look at U.S. history through religious history, there is very much a motif that shows the importance religion has played in the U.S. We're a very religious country and it affects the way we look at various political issues.
One of the things that was really an issue was I did not want to just be a woman secretary of state. I wanted to be a secretary of a state who was a woman, but not just chosen for that particular reason.
I think the personal relationships I established mattered in terms of what I was able to get done. And I did bring women's issues to the center of our foreign policy.
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.
When we're trying to solve difficult national issues its sometimes necessary to talk to adversaries as well as friends. Historians have a word for this: diplomacy.
So there really was a whole series of things that took the women of my generation a little bit of time to push forward.
I got married, I really waited a long time - three days after I graduated.
The bottom line is, the more we have a cadre of women moving up the scale, and it doesn't seem threatening, and people realize that women actually work much harder than men, and realize that they need more women in these jobs, I think that goes away.
I don't actually believe in a clash of civilizations. I believe in a clash of the civilized and the noncivilized.
What distinguishes Americans from many people in the world is our kind of endemic optimism.
The other thing that happened was that we have a tendency to project our own weaknesses onto another woman. I don't think men do that particularly.
I really do think about the fact that every day counts. I believe that every individual counts, and so I believe that every day counts and I try not to waste it.