Top 100 Madeleine Albright Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “What distinguishes Americans from many people in the world is our kind of endemic optimism.”

— Madeleine Albright

52. “Life is grim, and we don’t have to be grim all the time.”

— Madeleine Albright

53. “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.”

— Madeleine Albright

54. “I get up every morning and I’m grateful for everything that has happened. I go through my list about being grateful for my children and grandchildren, and for the really remarkable life that I have been able to have.”

— Madeleine Albright

55. “Jewelry and pins have been worn throughout history as symbols of power, sending messages. Interestingly enough, it was mostly men who wore the jewelry in various times, and obviously crowns were part of signals that were being sent throughout history by people of rank.”

— Madeleine Albright

56. “Democracy cannot be built on revenge and you will not have the support of the world if you are intolerant and take the law into your own hands.”

— Madeleine Albright

57. “A great task has been completed and an even larger one remains.”

— Madeleine Albright

58. “I think there has to be the sense that once you have climbed the ladder of success, that you don’t push it away from the building.”

— Madeleine Albright

59. “Don’t make me into this airy-fairy, moralist, idealist because I’m not.”

— Madeleine Albright

60. “I do think that one needs to have respect for people who are older. And I really do love the idea that one can respect generations.”

— Madeleine Albright

61. “Our predecessors understood that the ties that bind America are far stronger than disagreements over any particular policy and far more durable and profound than any party affiliation.”

— Madeleine Albright

62. “It takes more than one dove to make peace in the Middle East.”

— Madeleine Albright

63. “I never dreamed about one day becoming Secretary of State. It’s not that I was modest; it’s just that I had never seen a Secretary of State in a skirt.”

— Madeleine Albright

64. “Really, I have to laugh because there was a whole set of stories that made me sound like the Dragon Lady, you know, ‘tough this and tough that.’ Then there is this business about ‘gooey.’ The bottom line is I am a pragmatic idealist.”

— Madeleine Albright

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65. “Unfortunately for the Iraqi people, instead of meeting these requirements, for six years, Saddam Hussein has lied, delayed, obstructed and tried to deceive.”

— Madeleine Albright

66. “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.”

— Madeleine Albright

67. “The victor of the war in Iraq is Iran.”

— Madeleine Albright

68. “I know that war is very cruel and that life is harder when you aren’t able to live in the place you called home.”

— Madeleine Albright

69. “For me, being raised in a free America made all the difference.”

— Madeleine Albright

70. “I did go to Wellesley, a women’s college. And I am of a kind of strange generation which is transitional in terms of women who wanted to go out and get jobs.”

— Madeleine Albright

71. “Today, I say that no nation in the world need be left out of the global system we are constructing.”

— Madeleine Albright

72. “I don’t think people should think of women’s issues as auxiliary issues – they are central.”

— Madeleine Albright

73. “I was in Europe and it was at this stage that I fell in love with Americans in uniform. And I continue to have that love affair.”

— Madeleine Albright

74. “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.”

— Madeleine Albright

75. “Every new president inherits headaches, but President Obama has inherited an entire emergency room.”

— Madeleine Albright

76. “No matter how hard we might wish, we will not be able to transform China’s behavior overnight.”

— Madeleine Albright

77. “After the Cold War, to rally the American people to understand that we had to be a part of solutions. It’s one thing to say that we have to run everything, it’s another to say we don’t want anything to do with it.”

— Madeleine Albright

78. “It is an unfortunate fact that in many parts of the world women are considered property. An awful lot of injustice is obviously due to that; not just women’s status in the home, but all kinds of laws that are even more discriminating.”

— Madeleine Albright

79. “We must stop Saddam from ever again jeopardizing the stability and security of his neighbors with weapons of mass destruction.”

— Madeleine Albright

80. “There are an awful lot of things going on that need understanding and explanation, but – to put it mildly – the world is a mess.”

— Madeleine Albright

81. “I wasn’t a normal professor. I had worked in government. I hadn’t written nine zillion books. I was a hands-on professor.”

— Madeleine Albright

82. “In A Man With a Pipe, my brother observed that although my father had been seen as intellectual and my mother more a creature of temperament, she had often been the more levelheaded of the two. In sum, we miss them as we love them, equally and always.”

— Madeleine Albright

83. “I think that there is never an indispensable leader, you know? I think that there is a time with dignity that one needs to leave.”

— Madeleine Albright

84. “US is a very religious country. Separation of church and state is part of our credo, but that it is hard to understand since our money says “In God we trust” and every President says “God bless America”.”

— Madeleine Albright

85. “The greatest thrill in my life was to represent the United States of America.”

— Madeleine Albright

86. “Mahmoud Abbas is a puppet.”

— Madeleine Albright

87. “If we have to use force, it is because we are America.”

— Madeleine Albright

88. “I love being a woman and I was not one of these women who rose through professional life by wearing men’s clothes or looking masculine. I loved wearing bright colors and being who I am.”

— Madeleine Albright

89. “I think women want to take care of themselves, and I think having a voice in how that is done is very important.”

— Madeleine Albright

90. “What a blast it is to be here with Michael Moore.”

— Madeleine Albright

91. “When combined with information and communication technologies, microcredit can unleash new opportunities for the world’s poorest entrepreneurs and thereby revitalize the village economies they serve.”

— Madeleine Albright

92. “I saw what happened when a dictator was allowed to take over a piece of a country and the country went down the tubes. And I saw the opposite during the war when America joined the fight.”

— Madeleine Albright

93. “I enjoy wearing pins, and nobody tells me to do it.”

— Madeleine Albright

94. “No one has done what Saddam Hussein has done, or is thinking of doing. He is producing weapons of mass destruction, and he is qualitatively and quantitatively different from other dictators.”

— Madeleine Albright

95. “I felt that America’s duty was not to try to do everything itself, but to foster a sense of commitment that would bring out the best in every country.”

— Madeleine Albright

96. “I can’t imagine what it is like to be raised in a society where their only statues that exist are to you and your father.”

— Madeleine Albright

97. “I think I’ve revived the costume-jewelry industry.”

— Madeleine Albright

98. “I got married, I really waited a long time – three days after I graduated.”

— Madeleine Albright

99. “The administration does not agree with those who suggest we should deploy hundreds of thousands of American troops to engage militarily in a ground war in Iraq.”

— Madeleine Albright

100. “So there really was a whole series of things that took the women of my generation a little bit of time to push forward.”

— Madeleine Albright