Top 30 Susan Rice Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “If you want change, you have to make it. If we want progress we have to drive it.”

— Susan Rice

2. “Focus on something that stirs your soul, it’s hard to excel at anything that you don’t love.”

— Susan Rice

3. “Progress is the product of human agency. Things get better because we make them better. Things go wrong when we get too comfortable, when we fail to take risks or seize opportunities.”

— Susan Rice

4. “Well, I think by any expectation South Africa has come a tremendously long way. We’ve seen a society that many people thought couldn’t withstand a peaceful transition to democracy without a great deal of violence, in fact, make that transition and do it in relative peace and security.”

— Susan Rice

5. “I still believe that the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice, but nobody is going to do the hard bending, if not you and me. It’s our choice, and I have always believed we must choose each other.”

— Susan Rice

6. “Once you’ve learned to study in a bathing suit on the grass with muscled men throwing frisbees over your head, you can accomplish almost anything.”

— Susan Rice

7. “I would rather be alone and a loud voice for action than be silent.”

— Susan Rice

8. “I have been to Libya and walked the streets of Benghazi myself.”

— Susan Rice

9. “Iran’s economy is now shrinking by 1 percent a year. Its oil production is down 40 percent.”

— Susan Rice

10. “One can’t erase the tremendous burden of apartheid in 10 years, 20 years, I believe, even 30 years.”

— Susan Rice

11. “Thirty years ago, about 80% of a company’s assets resided in its plant and equipment, with 20% in the knowledge of its people. Today, the reverse is true. The knowledge of our staff is our principal asset.”

— Susan Rice

12. “I am very aware of being black and female because that’s what I am.”

— Susan Rice

13. “Bashar al-Assad and those who still stand by him are now responsible for the deaths of more than 20,000 in Syria.”

— Susan Rice

14. “Legislation that would withhold funding for the United Nations is fundamentally flawed in concept and practice, sets us back, is self-defeating, and doesn’t work.”

— Susan Rice

15. “South Africa’s increasingly, for example, the largest foreign investor in various other parts of Africa.”

— Susan Rice

16. “Americans are hungry for change both at home and in our relations with the rest of the world.”

— Susan Rice

17. “Peace, prosperity, and democracy cannot endure if imposed from the outside. We should cease to make false distinctions between peacekeeping and prevention; they are in fact inextricably linked.”

— Susan Rice

18. “I spend every day up at the United Nations where I have to interact with 192 other countries. I know how well the United States is viewed.”

— Susan Rice

19. “The larger picture here is that a North Korea with nuclear weapons adds to the larger proliferation risk.”

— Susan Rice

20. “Like democracy itself, jazz has structure, but within it you can say almost anything.”

— Susan Rice

21. “As Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Barak have repeatedly said, the intelligence and security relationship between the United States and Israel at present is unprecedented. It has never been stronger.”

— Susan Rice

22. “I was conscious of the fact that it could be to my disadvantage to marry a white guy – that some folks would hold that against me.”

— Susan Rice

23. “What I learned is that policymakers have to force consideration of actions that may not have occurred to them at the time.”

— Susan Rice

24. “The kids are Job One. So, to be quite candid, if they need me, I do my utmost to make sure I’m there.”

— Susan Rice

25. “I have no regrets whatsoever that I have acted in a way to advance my country’s interests.”

— Susan Rice

26. “The United States share of the African market it’s very small, it’s only about 8 percent.”

— Susan Rice

27. “I think most Americans understand that we went through a period in which American leadership was judged quite critically internationally.”

— Susan Rice

28. “We are safer if there are not nuclear arsenals around the planet that can be utilized, stolen, sold to terrorists and others who would do harm.”

— Susan Rice

29. “There is not an inherent contradiction between a Ukraine that has longstanding historic and cultural ties to Russia, and a modern Ukraine that wants to integrate more closely with Europe.”

— Susan Rice

30. “Americans understand that our security is enhanced when the United States is trusted and respected in the world.”

— Susan Rice

31. “Iran’s arms exports to the murderous Assad regime in Syria are of particular concern. As the Panel of Experts has concluded, Syria is now the central party to illicit Iranian arms transfers.”

— Susan Rice

32. “Don’t take no for an answer when the question is: can I? Family comes first and must stand together. Don’t forget where you come from.”

— Susan Rice

33. “Now, it was clear: I may be black; but objectively by their standards, I was also the best. They had to deal with that. My father’s daughter, I decided to let race be their problem, not mine.”

— Susan Rice