United States Federal Government Officials

"I have never wavered from the belief that public service is a worthy profession, that the reward is worth the risk, that the stakes are too great to turn away from the calling."

"Take a chance. Don’t be afraid of what you don’t know. And don’t fall in love with Plan A."

"Diplomacy is about meeting the world with open eyes, attuned listening and small gestures of outreach. It was second nature to Hillary Clinton."

"So much of what happened to me professionally felt like I was floating in a cauldron, and so much about this book is about taking control"

"To make your own choices, but be thoughtful about them, not rash."

"As long as you had that grounding, as long as you had that place where you knew you could draw strength, where you knew you had a strong family to support you, everything was going to be OK."

"The role of the president of the United States is to support the decisions that are made by the people of Israel. It is not up to us to pick and choose from among the political parties."

"President Biden and his foreign policy team—National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, and Victoria Nuland, the Undersecretary of State for Policy—had been vocal and consistent in their hostility to the two pipelines, which ran side by side for 750 miles under the Baltic Sea"

"We are actively working to ensure the safe return of every American being held hostage and every other person being held hostage by Hamas"

"I spoke to my counterpart Jean-Charles Ellermann-Kingombe of Denmark about the apparent sabotage of Nord Stream pipelines. The U.S. is supporting efforts to investigate and we will continue our work to safeguard Europe's energy security. 8:11 PM · Sep 27, 2022"

"Last Sunday... Sullivan made a claim that has drawn criticism from Republican lawmakers... [regarding] sanctions [on] the company in charge of the pipeline, Nord Stream 2 AG, and its chief executive officer... “We waived sanctions only on two, and they were not Russian. It was a German individual and a Swiss company,” Sullivan said... Sullivan’s assertion that Nord Stream 2 AG is “not Russian” is misleading. Though the company is indeed registered as a Swiss entity, it is wholly owned by Gazprom – an energy company that is majority-owned by the Russian government... a senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, told us that Sullivan is “absolutely correct” that Nord Stream 2 AG is a Swiss company “as a point of law.” But we still think Sullivan went too far, regardless of his intent, when he said with no additional explanation that the company is “not Russian” even though it is, in fact, controlled by Putin’s Kremlin"

"What became clear to participants... is that Sullivan intended for the group to come up with a plan for the destruction of the two Nord Stream pipelines—and that he was delivering on the desires of the President... in early 2022, the CIA working group reported back to Sullivan’s interagency group: “We have a way to blow up the pipelines.”"

"The United States still has the ability to more than hold its own in that competition, so long as it doesn’t continue along the current trajectory of self-sabotage. But the fact that China has two plausible paths to preeminence means that the contest will be more complex, and potentially more challenging, than it was during America’s last great-power rivalry."

"[ Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ] does have a responsibility to rein in the extremist settlers on the West Bank [who are] pouring fuel on the fire"

"...As Long as Europe remained dependent on the pipelines for cheap natural gas, Washington was afraid that countries like Germany would be reluctant to supply Ukraine with the money and weapons it needed to defeat Russia. It was at this unsettled moment that Biden authorized Jake Sullivan to bring together an interagency group to come up with a plan. All options were to be on the table. But only one would emerge. In December of 2021, two months before the first Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, Jake Sullivan convened a meeting of a newly formed task force—men and women from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, and the State and Treasury Departments—and asked for recommendations about how to respond to Putin’s impending invasion."

"The president and the vice president are devoted to ensuring that every American has access to health care, including reproductive health care, regardless of their income, zip code, race, health insurance status, or immigration status"

"If Roe were to fall, abortion would probably be illegal in about half the states in the country, up to 26 states, particularly in the South, the Midwest, and West, who have all spoken out — many leaders — about how they’re poised to restrict or ban access. Some have even taken action, even as recently as yesterday, as crazy as that sounds."

"My armor has always been to do the homework and to be as prepared as you can possibly be. And to ask questions"

"I am used to being doubted and being underestimated. And I find that to be a place to thrive"

"Today, in preparation for travel to Europe, I took a PCR test this morning. That test came back positive, which means I will be adhering to CDC guidance and no longer be traveling on the President's trip to Europe."

"When I’m hiring, I’m always looking for people who have the best attitude and will happily make 400 copies and do it with a smile and ask to do more. Oftentimes that’s the differentiator between people"

"The tragedy of the treadmill that's delayed!"

"As much as wages are up and unemployment are down, we — unemployment is down — we also recognize there are longer-term issues we want to address, including inflation"

"I don't think our role is to place blame, but what we can do is provide accurate information to people who are not yet vaccinated about the risks they are incurring not only among on themselves, but also the people around them"

"What our role is and what we're going to continue to do is make the vaccine available, we're going to continue to work in partnership to fight misinformation, and we're going to continue to advocate and work in partnership with local officials and trusted voices to get the word out"

"I will note I’m a human being. I’m an Irish person who, not to stereotype myself, but I have times where I get a little hot. I try not to, but there are days where I wish I would’ve been calmer, or more gracious, in my responses when you have a moment of human frustration. But I will tell you that how I try to approach it is trying to use it as a forum for providing information to the public. And trying to treat people, on my best days, with respect"

"There are times where you have to be on the journey and recognize that sometimes you don’t know what the end is going to be, right? Maybe it’s going to be great. And maybe it’s not"

"The kinds of people you meet on political campaigns are some of the best human beings. They’re survivors, and they’re spunky, and they have personalities, and they spend months sleeping on couches and living on, whatever, pizza and coffee and bad beer"

"I had not realized myself that it’s actually gotten worse. The Chinese treatment of the United States has gotten more unfair, if I can put it that way, than was the case three years ago when I wrote my book trying to sound the alarm."

"Until the Chinese are more cooperative with us in specific areas, maybe we’ve made a mistake in growing China into a great power when its hostility towards us is higher than we realized."

"Human will can be effective only at the margin of events. Freedom is not absolute either for individuals or for nations and much is determined by forces beyond their control, by events of the past, by accident, or by chance. At any given moment in time the margin of freedom left them may seem so small as to make it hardly worthwhile to exercise their will one way or the other. But the narrow margin of today becomes the foundation of the broader possibility for tomorrow. Over time the margin of freedom — the impact of will upon the possible — expands geometrically. The decision of today makes possible, or forecloses, ten decisions of tomorrow. The accumulated wisdom and experience of the past do not always give unambiguous precedents for decisions and actions at the relevant margin of freedom of the present. A new integration of general purpose with the concrete possibilities of the present may then become necessary. The most difficult issues of foreign policy and ethics arise when changes in degree, at some point, move so far as to become changes in kind, and dictate fundamental departures from past policy and direction."

"If there is little or no middle ground in the struggle for peace with justice, what resources of will and of national sacrifice are we entitled, or ethically called upon, to put into the effort to cause a system compatible with superior values to prevail? What risks are we entitled to take with the awful hazard of a nuclear war? What guidelines emerge from a comprehensive analysis of the full range of pertinent considerations? The concept of an ethical framework that has objective validity, over and beyond the values of the individual or societal groups and to which man can aspire to have some degree of understanding, seemed to me to be necessary for there to be a well-founded sense of direction to a foreign policy."

"As for the so-called rogue states that are not inhibited in their actions by the consensus of world opinion, the United States would be wise to eliminate their nuclear capabilities with the preemptive use of our conventional weapons — when necessary, and when we have unambiguous indication of these countries' intent to use their nuclear capability for purposes of aggrandizement. The same principle should apply to any threat emanating from unstable states with nuclear arsenals. By simply having our intelligence services read their mail, we can tell if there is compelling reason to take preemptive action."

"The problems and opportunities facing the present and coming generations are no less, perhaps greater, than those we faced. I hope that some of our experiences may provide insights useful to them. In any case I am grateful to have had the good luck to participate in the history of a fateful era."

"There have been, from time to time, changes in the degree of destructiveness of weapons and of war. These changes, until recent decades, generally have been considered not to have invalidated the precepts of Western civilization and its antecedent cultures of the moral obligation to defend its freedoms, diversity, and cultural growth from tyranny, reaction, and cultural stagnation or death. But with the advent of the nuclear age, we are faced with a change in degree that threatens to become one of kind. The destructive nature of nuclear war dictates that we no longer regard war as merely the continuation of policy by other means. The deterrence of nuclear war, until such time as technology provides a more reliable and stable method, must, for the United States, be based upon the capability to prevail if deterrence should fail. But this must be combined with an effort to join with other nations in the creation of a just international order."

"Those who know me moderately well will say that I am an assertive, hard-nosed pragmatist. I guess that judgment comes from the fact that I have a firm belief that the world can turn out to be better than it otherwise would be depending upon what individuals, particularly those who have luck on their side, do about it. What is more, I believe Americans, to quite a disproportionate degree, have luck on their side. It is my view that belief is the underlying and basic element of policy and action. First one must sort out matters of belief: who one is, in what relationship to whom, and what general direction in the realm of values is up and what direction is down. Then clear and rigorous logic, based upon a cold and unemotional assessment of the objective evidence concerning the relevant facts, and a careful analysis of the probable outcomes and probable material and moral costs of alternative courses of action, can help to get one from where one is to where one wants, and should want, to be."

"In view of the fact that we can achieve our objectives with conventional weapons, there is no purpose to be gained through the use of our nuclear arsenal. To use it would merely guarantee the annihilation of hundreds of thousands of people, none of whom would have been responsible for the decision invoked in bringing about the weapons' use, not to mention incalculable damage to our natural environment."

"Early in life, as a witness to the limitless tragedy of World War I, I felt grow in me a determination to act, to work with others to influence the course of history and not supinely to accept what, in the absence of will and action, might be the world's fate. I came to Washington in the summer of 1940 with Jim Forrestal. I have been here, with short exceptions, ever since. For almost five decades I have played some role in the affairs of state, working with others to bend what otherwise might have been called the "inevitable trends of history." Some of the outcomes were wholly satisfactory, some marginally successful, and some were failures-but, on the whole, they were better, I think, than would otherwise have come about. On balance, we were fortunate in the opportunities for significant action the fortune of history opened up for us. It cannot be the good fortune of all mankind to live in Athens under the leadership of a Pericles, in Florence under the Medici, in the United States under a Washington or a Lincoln. Nor is it the usual fate of mankind to live under a Cleon, a Nero, a Stalin or a Hitler and thus have an unambiguous case for withdrawal from government or opposition to it. The usual case is a mixed one in which the task of the man of general wisdom and with a taste for politics is to manage, to deal with, to nudge the existing situation toward the best that is within the realm of the politically possible, to find such scope as he can for his courage, his fortitude, and his willingness to view facts with an open mind. When given half a chance, the combination of courage and an open mind can do wonders."

"Why would someone who spent so many years negotiating with the Soviet Union about the size of our nuclear arsenal now say we no longer need it? I know that the simplest and most direct answer to the problem of nuclear weapons has always been their complete elimination. My walk in the woods in 1982 with the Soviet arms negotiator Yuli Kvitsinsky at least addressed this possibility on a bilateral basis. Destruction of the arms did not prove feasible then, but there is no good reason why it should not be carried out now. … It is the presence of nuclear weapons that threatens our existence."

"In our view, all-out war promises the least success in achieving the objectives we have outlined. First, it would not necessarily discourage other potential aggressors. Defeating Saddam Hussein promptly in an all-out war would send an unequivocal signal that this aggression had not been tolerated. But if casualties were high, U.S. sentiment probably would be driven toward a more isolationist posture. Many Americans would be dismayed by the carnage and resentful that our allies were not paying a similar price. (The seeds of such resentment already exist.) They could be expected to oppose any comparable U.S. role in the future. The message would be that the United States had neither the inclination to work in concert with other nations nor the stomach to repeat the anti-Iraq action. Many of our current collaborators, who are ambivalent at best about the war option, might also lose interest in future cooperation with us. A world of growing brutality and chaos would become a likely prospect."

"For the past generation, Americans have regretted that in Vietnam, we let the passions of the moment and a lack of healthy skepticism toward presidential claims obscure a clear-headed assessment of our national interests. The result was that we were driven into a costly, divisive, and ultimately counterproductive expansion of a war that lacked adequate public support. Let's not spend the next generation wondering how we came to repeat that mistake."

"Our main goal should be to establish a precedent for a new post-Cold War era, in which the community of nations, working through the United Nations and other organizations, can insure that would-be aggressors do not profit from invasion, coercion and force."

"The fact is, I see no compelling reason why we should not unilaterally get rid of our nuclear weapons. To maintain them is costly and adds nothing to our security. I can think of no circumstances under which it would be wise for the United States to use nuclear weapons, even in retaliation for their prior use against us. What, for example, would our targets be? It is impossible to conceive of a target that could be hit without large-scale destruction of many innocent people. The technology of our conventional weapons is such that we can achieve accuracies of less than three feet from the expected point of impact. The modern equivalent of a stick of dynamite exploded within three feet of an object on or near the earth's surface is more than enough to destroy the target."

"Some people say there are two policies in the executive branch … one is mine and the other is the president's, which is marginally so. Some of the things I've said are different from what the president has said, but all the things I have said have been approved by the president."

"One of the most dangerous forms of human error is forgetting what one is trying to achieve. In the gulf crisis, it is crucial that we look beyond our anger at Saddam and remind ourselves of precisely what U.S. interests are in the crisis and what we seek to accomplish."

"From the beginning of the nuclear age, whether in government or out, Mr. Nitze urged successive American presidents to take measures against what he saw as the Soviet drive to overwhelm the United States through the force of arms. Yet he may be best remembered for his conciliatory role in efforts to achieve two major arms agreements with the Soviet Union. … A man of intimidating intellect, Mr. Nitze could be warm and affectionate or cerebral and brittle. He was a formidable bureaucrat with a brilliant mind and a persuasive pen. Out of government — as he was during the Carter administration — he was an equally effective critic, as he showed in the late 1970's as the mastermind of the opposition to the second strategic arms limitation agreement. He used complicated charts and computer printouts to warn that the treaty would lock the United States into permanent strategic inferiority. Despite this vigorous opposition, once Mr. Nitze was back in government, he urged President Reagan to comply with the terms of the treaty even though it was never ratified. … He always seemed too conservative for the liberal administrations and too liberal for the conservative ones."

"The direction of NSC-68 focused on the need for dramatic increases in US defense spending and on American willingness to intervene globally. It encouraged economic and psychological warfare as well as covert operations to target the Soviet enemy and its allies. It wanted a dramatic increase in US intelligence-gathering capabilities and in money spent on internal security and civil defense. It was even foolhardy enough to suggest that tax increases and cuts in domestic programs would be necessary to pay for these expenses. The purpose was to put the United States on war footing in a conflict that could last for a very long time. Still, the most striking aspect of NSC-68 was not its practical suggestions but the view of the enemy that it represented. “The defeat of Germany and Japan and the decline of the British and French Empires have interacted with the development of the United States and the Soviet Union in such a way that power increasingly gravitated to these two centers,” Nitze and his colleagues explained."

"Truman’s second-term foreign policy was marked by increasing tension with the Soviets, the collapse of a US-supported government in China, and the outbreak of the Korean War. This was the time when the Cold War was militarized, both from a Soviet and American perspective. Truman’s administration struggled to put together a comprehensive and global strategy for fighting what everyone hoped would remain a shadow war with the Soviets. There was never much doubt in the president’s mind that the struggle was both against the Soviet Union and Communism globally. And he had little time for those among his own advisers—such as George Kennan—who warned against a global militarization of the conflict. Kennan was replaced as director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff in 1949, and his successor, the more hawkish Paul Nitze, put together a document that attempted to set out a US Cold War strategy. Later known as NSC-68, the paper was radical in its recommendations and would probably not have come to reflect the Administration’s policies if it had not been for the outbreak of the Korean War three months after it was first presented."

"We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there"

"Strength of the U.S. economy is the country's edge in human capital, the productivity, innovation, and entrepreneurship of its workers. The United States remains the top destination for smart, skilled, and creative individuals even as the global competition for such workers intensifies. According to a 2010 ' study, almost a quarter of the world's adults looking to emigrate list the United States as their ideal destination. And once they arrive, these immigrants make an enormous contribution to innovation and growth in the American economy. A study found that American immigrants of Chinese and Indian descent accounted for 15% of U.S. domestic patents in 2004, up from just 2% in 1975. ' has estimated that a quarter of technology and engineering businesses started in the United States between 1995 and 2005 had a foreign-born founder. Immigration is thus a great source of America's economic strength."