Quotes By Paul Wolfowitz

Look, I think the public generally understands that what's at stake in Afghanistan is American security, number one.

That sense of what happened in Europe in World War II has shaped a lot of my views.

Sometimes corruption is slowed by shedding light into what was previously shadowed.

History is just littered with problems that were solved that were supposed to be impossible.

I have always had a tendency to keep enlarging problems which I personally think is the way the world works... that seeing anything one dimensionally on the kinds of political, sort of big issues of human progress is going to be a distorted view of things, which is why over my career I have gone seemingly from subject to subject to subject.

For one thing I tend not to see myself in various moulds that people fit me into.

One of the things that ultimately led me to leave mathematics and go into political science was thinking I could prevent nuclear war.

I certainly don't like a label that suggests I believe that the military is the solution to most of the world's problems.

I've met quite a few dictators up close and personal in my life.

I'm not sure the oil producers are enjoying real growth. That troubles me. For experience has shown that oil can be more of a curse than a blessing. And not only in Africa.

No one argues that we should have imposed a dictatorship in Afghanistan having liberated the country. Similarly, we weren't about to impose a dictatorship in Iraq having liberated the country.

I can't predict the future.

Public action should seek to expand the set of opportunities of those who have the least voice and fewest resources and capabilities.

China, in the future, is going to have even more nuclear capability than it has had in the past. I don't believe that they have anything to fear from the United States, and I frankly don't believe they do fear the United States.

For the private sector to flourish, special privilege must give way to equal opportunity and equal risk for all.

Someone once said that history has more imagination than all the scenario writers in the Pentagon, and we have a lot of scenario writers here. No one ever wrote a scenario for commercial airliners crashing into the World Trade Center.

I like globalization; I want to say it works, but it is hard to say that when six hundred million people are slipping backwards.

You can't be involved in healthcare without being involved in the battle against AIDS.

Poles understand perhaps better than anyone the consequences of making toothless warnings to brutal tyrants and terrorist regimes.

I think that all countries that participate in multilateral institutions see the institutions as a way of advancing what they view as their national interests and they see in many cases multi-lateral institution as the best way to do that.

Look, I think the notion that there's a dogma or doctrine of foreign policy that gives you a textbook recipe for how to react to all situations is really nonsense.

I mean, we're going to probably debate the Iraq war for at least as long as I'm alive.

Jobs are a priority for every country. Doing more to improve regulation and help entrepreneurs is the key to creating jobs - and more growth.

I think, in the longer view of things, there is a very powerful pull in the direction of participatory government.

I think it's a mistake to rely too much on any one economic factor. It's why investors try to spread their portfolio round.

The American people are pretty impressive in their ability to keep after something if they think it is doable.

Support for peaceful reform by the people themselves is the right way to promote democracy, not the use of force.

We don't start a job that we can't finish... that's the American way.

I told my father I had to try political science for a year. He thought I was throwing my life away.

Democracy is a process.