The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir

by Samantha Power

We make sense of our lives through stories. Regardless of our different backgrounds and perspectives, stories have the power to bind us.

He never seemed afraid of looking uninformed—which, to me, seemed to be the highest form of confidence.

Fred dismissed the question, telling me, “If the UN had been around in 1939, we’d all be speaking German.”

“Why should I be a minority in your state when you can be a minority in mine?”

I felt an immense sense of privilege at being able to chronicle the experience of men and women being reunited with their elderly parents who had been too infirm to flee.

I wrote to myself that I wanted to “be on the other side of the microphone,” in a position to make or change US policy.