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

Especially when we are afraid, angry, or confused, we may be tempted to give away bits of our freedom—or, less painfully, somebody else’s freedom—in the quest for direction and order.

The main thing is to remain oneself, under any circumstances; that was and is our common purpose.

A spoonful of sugar can be as helpful in dealing with foreign diplomats as it is in child psychology, for these are not unrelated fields.

As a leader, you have to have the ability to assimilate new information and understand that there might be a different view.

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.

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.