Quotes By Paul Wolfowitz

Democracy is a process.

You can't win if you're chasing the wrong problem.

The absence of Saddam is a huge weight off the Arab world.

The internal affairs of other countries has a big impact on American interests.

Before September 11, terrorism was viewed as something ugly but you lived with it.

Generally speaking, the stronger the connection between the financing and the ultimate beneficiary, the better the result.

We did not go to war in Afghanistan or in Iraq to, quote, 'impose democracy.' We went to war in both places because we saw those regimes as a threat to the United States.

It's wonderful that so many people want to contribute to fighting aids or malaria. But, if somebody isn't paying attention to the overall health system in the country, a whole lot of money can be wasted.

The cost of the high-cost economy remains too high.

I think one has to say it's not just simply a matter of capturing people and holding them accountable, but removing the sanctuaries, removing the support systems, ending states who sponsor terrorism. And that's why it has to be a broad and sustained campaign.

The use of force to liberate people is very different from the use of force to suppress or control them, or even to defeat them.

The most striking thing is that even before Osama bin Laden was killed, he seemed largely irrelevant to the Arab Spring.

If greater openness is a key to economic success, I believe there is increasingly a need for openness in the political sphere as well.

It is kind of nice to have a common purpose.

Part of what is wrong with the view of American imperialism is that it is antithetical to our interests. We are better off when people are governing themselves. I'm sure there is some guy that will tell you that philosophy is no different from the Roman Empire's. Well, it is fundamentally different.

I think all foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq. Those who want to come and help are welcome. Those who come to interfere and destroy are not.

It's a very bad thing when people exterminate other people, and people persecute minorities.

I'm constantly asking for alternative views on most things that come to me.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.