Condoleezza Rice Quotes

We need to move beyond the idea that girls can be leaders and create the expectation that they should be leaders.

Great leaders never accept the world as it was and always work for the world as it should be

The most important lesson I think I could impart is don't let anyone determine what your horizons are going to be. You get to determine those yourself. The only limitations are whatever particular talents you happen to have and how hard you're willing to work. And if you let others define who you ought to be, or what you ought to be because they put you in a category, they see your race, they see your gender and they put you in a category. You shouldn't let that happen.

You might not be able to control your circumstances but you can control your response to your circumstances.

Truly remarkable leadership is not just about motivating others to follow, it's about inspiring them to become leaders themselves and setting the stage for even greater opportunities for future generations.

The essence of America - that which really unites us - is not ethnicity, or nationality or religion - it is an idea - and what an idea it is: That you can come from humble circumstances and do great things.

Life is full of surprises and and serendipity. Being open to unexpected turns in the road is an important part of success. If you try to plan every step, you may miss those wonderful twists and turns. Just find your next adventure-do it well, enjoy it-and then, not now, think about what comes next.

The first step for a leader is to be right with yourself. Integrity is the basis of leadership.

In America, with education and hard work, it really does not matter where you came from; it matters only where you are going.

Self esteem comes from achievements. Not from lax standards and false praise.

The first Republican I knew was my father and he is still the Republican I most admire. He joined our party because the Democrats in Jim Crow Alabama of 1952 would not register him to vote. The Republicans did. My father has never forgotten that day, and neither have I.

You know, I've never believed, in anything, that you had to have role models who looked like you to do something. If I'd been waiting for a black, female, soviet specialist role model, I'd be still waiting.

You will make a difference in the world, but not immediately. Your first obligation is to find something you like doing, because if you like doing it, you'll do it well.

When somebody underestimated me, it made me want to prove them wrong.

Education is of no value and talent is worthless - unless you have an unwavering aim. Never find yourself without a compass.

Differences can be a strength.

[In] the United States, we've always been held together by the belief that it doesn't matter where you came from. It matters where you're going.

Every life is capable of greatness.

Our work has only begun. In our time we have an historic opportunity to shape a global balance of power that favors freedom and that will therefore deepen and extend the peace. And I use the word power broadly, because even more important than military and indeed economic power is the power of ideas, the power of compassion, and the power of hope.

If you're always in the company of people who agree with you, you're going to think of people who don't agree with you as venal or stupid. I constantly tell my students that if they're in the company of people who always say "amen" to what you say, find other company. And that is the source of illiberalism, when you are unable to listen to someone who thinks differently. That's when democracies are in trouble.

I'm very glad my mother didn't let me quit piano lessons at age 10. She said I wasn't old enough or good enough to make that decision, and she was right. I remember at the time I was shocked. I did not like that my mother said those things to me. But when I got a chance to play with Yo-Yo Ma or more recently with Aretha Franklin, I thought, I'm really glad she said what she did.

When are we going to stop making excuses for the terrorists and saying that somebody is making them do it? No, these are simply evil people who want to kill.

I didn't run for student council president. I don't see myself in any way in elected office. I love policy. I'm not particularly fond of politics.

It has been, after all, 11 years, more than a decade now, of defiance of U.N. resolutions by Saddam Hussein. Every obligation that he signed onto after the Gulf War, so that he would not be a threat to peace and security, he has ignored and flaunted.

The sooner you learn that life is not fair, the better off you'll be, because you'll spend less time railing against life's unfairness and feeling aggrieved and entitled, and more time figuring out how to maximize your assets, and your talents and how to deal with things that you're not very good at.

There's no greater challenge and there is no greater honor than to be in public service.

Prejudice and bigotry are brought down...by the sheer force of determination of individuals to succeed and the refusal of a human being to let prejudice define the parameters of the possible.

Race is a constant factor in American life. Yet reacting to every incident,real or imagined, is crippling, tiring, and ultimately counterproductive.

Your passion may be hard to spot, so keep an open mind and keep searching.

You have to have a strong sense of your values and a strong sense of who you are, because there are a lot of events and a lot of people who will pull you in this direction or that direction.

Power is nothing unless you can turn it into influence.

It is a dangerous thing to ask why someone else has been given more. It is humbling - and indeed healthy - to ask why you have been given so much.

Most days are not overwhelmingly successful in your life. And what really marks whether you're going to be successful is how well you deal with the bad days, not how well you deal with the good ones.

If you cannot allow people to do their jobs ... nobody with substance and creativity will work for you.

Every life is worthy and every life is capable of greatness. We have an obligation to make sure that opportunity for greatness is there.

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.

We can't live true to our set of values unless American educational system is strong. I really believe that if we don't get that right we will not compete because we won't believe that our people can compete, and we'll turn inward. We won't lead. That will be bad for the world.

You can never ask others to do something you would not do. That is integrity.

What you know today can affect what you do tomorrow, but not what you did yesterday.

We're not going to negotiate about the terms of terrorism. You don't negotiate about terrorism. It's is wrong to engage in terrorism, and there isn't anything to negotiate.

I remember classes in college where the professor was espousing certain theories about how blacks were inherently less intelligent. But I learned a long time ago to give people the benefit of the doubt, not to assume that somebody was reacting to you because of race.

I firmly believe you never should spend your time being the former anything.

We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.

People may oppose you, but when they realize you can hurt them, they'll join your side.

Education is transformational. It changes lives. That is why people work so hard to become educated and why education has always been the key to the American Dream, the force that erases arbitrary divisions of race and class and culture and unlocks every person's God-given potential.

I feel that we're dividing along class lines for the first time in our history. Now one thing that has happened in this reaction to globalization is that the elites are not respectful of the values of those who are ordinary citizens, so we seem to be dividing ourselves into ever-smaller identity groups, each with its own narrative, each with its own grievance, and that's a problem.

You cannot be on one hand dedicated to peace and on the other dedicated to violence. Those two things are irreconcilable.

We're in a new world. We're in a world in which the possibility of terrorism, married up with technology, could make us very, very sorry that we didn't act.

We're all products of our environment, and I suspect that strength of will - the feeling, "I'm going to be able to do whatever you put in front of me" - is honed in an environment where not everything is easy. Ironically, growing up in that environment, you don't have a sense of aggrievement or entitlement. You just have a sense of overcoming.

Well, there are many things, whenever you look back, that you would've done differently. We're all human. We do our best at the time. I really wish that we had passed a comprehensive immigration bill because that would've really helped our country. We came close, but we couldn't.