No Higher Honor Quotes

“Societies that treat women badly are dangerous societies. The empowerment of women is not only morally right it is also practical in the positive impact it has on so many social ills.”
― Condoleezza Rice, No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington

“One of the hardest things about diplomacy is to put yourself into someone else's shoes without compromising your own principles.”
― Condoleezza Rice, No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington

“[T]hat afternoon, Sergei Lavrov called me for the second time during the crisis. [...] “We have three demands,” he said.
“What are they?” I asked.
“The first two are that the Georgians sign the no-use-of-force pledge and that their troops return to barracks,” he told me.
“Done,” I answered.

[...] But then Sergei said, “The other demand is just between us. Misha Saakashvili has to go.” I couldn’t believe my ears and I reacted out of instinct, not analysis.

“Sergei, the secretary of state of the United States does not have a conversation with the Russian foreign minister about overthrowing a democratically elected president,” I said. “The third condition has just become public because I’m going to call everyone I can and tell them that Russia is demanding the overthrow of the Georgian president.”

“I said it was between us,” he repeated.
“No, it’s not between us. Everyone is going to know.” The conversation ended. I called Steve Hadley to tell him about the Russian demand. Then I called the British, the French, and several others. That afternoon the UN Security Council was meeting. I asked our representative to inform the Council as well.

Lavrov was furious, saying that he’d never had a colleague divulge the contents of a diplomatic conversation. I felt I had no choice. If the Georgians wanted to punish Saakashvili for the war, they would have a chance to do it through their own constitutional processes. But the Russians had no right to insist on his removal. The whole thing had an air of the Soviet period, when Moscow had controlled the fate of leaders throughout Eastern Europe. I was certainly not going to be party to a return to those days [688].”
― Condoleezza Rice, No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington

“somewhat vague) new relationship between the United States”
― Condoleezza Rice, No Higher Honour

“In the early days, the President also had a tendency to finish my sentences for me. Finally one day, standing in the Oval, I said, “Mr. President, I know we’re close and that you think you know what I’m going to say. I know you don’t mean any harm, but I’m sure others see it as a sign of disrespect for my opinion.” He was crestfallen. I felt bad bringing it up, but I was walking a fine line. I was staff, not a Cabinet secretary. At home and abroad, leaders and colleagues had to know that the President listened to me. As time went on I became very aware that no one doubted our relationship. The President would tell people that we were like brother and sister. Yet it wasn’t always easy to get the balance right.”
― Condoleezza Rice, No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington

“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.”
― Condoleezza Rice, No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington

“The foreign ministers were unsettled too by the buzz around the report’s insistence on a new diplomatic push that would involve talking to Iran—a kind of regional solution to the Iraq problem. They were rightly suspicious that the Iranians would use their enhanced diplomatic perch that would come with U.S. consultations to further their influence in the region, and the ministers wanted a promise that the United States was not about to sell out to Tehran to end the war in Iraq.”
― Condoleezza Rice, No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington

“Realists ran to the barricades to sound the alarm that “interests,” not “idealism,” should guide the United States’ interactions with the world. What they failed to see was that the Freedom Agenda was not just a moral or idealistic cause; it was a redefinition of what constituted realism, a change in the way we viewed U.S. interests in the new circumstances forced on us by the attacks of that horrible day. We rather quickly arrived at the conclusion that U.S. interests and values could be linked together in a coherent way, forming what I came to call a distinctly American realism.”
― Condoleezza Rice, No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington

“John Lewis Gaddis had come to visit shortly before the election and over lunch said something that resonated with me. “Never forget how really dependent the world is on America. And they know it.”
― Condoleezza Rice, No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington