“Well, the thing that I learned as a diplomat is that human relations ultimately make a huge difference.”

Respect for the rights of others is a lofty principle; but envy is a primal urge (p114)

Because of my parents’ love of democracy, we came to America after being driven twice from our home in Czechoslovakia – first by Hitler and then by Stalin.

McCarthy fooled as many as he did because a lot of people shared his anxieties.

Fascism, most of the students agreed, is an extreme form of authoritarian rule. Citizens are required to do exactly what leaders say they must do, nothing more, nothing less.

Bill Clinton observed that when people are uncertain, they’d rather have leaders who are strong and wrong than right and weak.

I also think it is important for women to help one another. I have a saying: There is a special place in hell for women who don’t.

Unless you can understand what is motivating them, you are never going to be able to figure out how to solve a particular problem.

We will not be intimidated or pushed off the world stage by people who do not like what we stand for, and that is, freedom, democracy and the fight against disease, poverty and terrorism.

Trump is the first anti-democratic president in modern U.S. history.

In 2016, Fascism was searched on the Merriam-Webster dictionary website more often than any other word in English except surreal, which experienced a sudden spike after the November presidential election.

The Fascist game plan: a single party, speaking with one voice, controlling every state institution, claiming to represent all people, and labeling the entire sham a triumph of the popular will.

A dictatorship by any other name is still a dictatorship, whether its symbol is the czarist two-headed eagle or the hammer and sickle.

When, at a party, a woman (half socialite, half journalist) told me how brave she thought I had been for not getting a facelift, I was tempted to comment on the courage she had shown in dealing with the results of hers.

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

I once experimented with meditation, cleared my mind, and immediately remembered a phone call I had to make; that was that.

The conservatives saw the Fascist leader as someone they could hide behind, manipulate, and, when convenient, replace.

In truth, the only difference between those who have failed and those who have succeeded lies in the difference of their habits.

We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure.

I’ve always maintained that it isn’t the form that’s going to make the difference. It isn’t the rule or the procedure or the ideology, but it’s human beings that will make it.

To the optimist all doors have handles and hinges; to the pessimist, all doors have locks and latches.

The only difference between you and someone you envy is you settled for less

The difference between you and the person you envy, is that you settle for less.

I prefer the errors of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom.

What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.