Rachel Maddow Quotes

[Dan Fried ]is a pillar of the U.S. State Department. He's part of its institutional memory. He has been in the room for basically every important negotiation, every standoff, every big development, particularly between the United States and Russia for decades.

If I could have anything right now, it would be the ability to continue as secretary of state.

My father was a Foreign Service officer, a diplomat and an Arabist who spent virtually all his career in the Near East, as it was called in the State Department. So I spent most of my childhood among the Israelis and the Arabs of Palestine, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

For somebody who loves foreign policy, being Secretary is the best job in the world - but it doesn't happen twice.

President Bush has had an outstanding Secretary of State in Colin Powell and there are not many people who could replace him, making Condoleezza Rice an excellent choice.

My friends all say I'm going to be Secretary of State. But I don't see how that would be much different from the job I have now.

Right, well I am, I was a career diplomat for 37 years from 1960 until 1997 during the early 1980s from 1981 to 1985 I was the United States Ambassador to Honduras.

My father had been in the German Diplomatic Service, and although he had been in the United States since World War II and out of diplomacy, it was something that was very much talked about in the family. So when I went to college, it was always my intention to try to get into the Foreign Service.

The State Department desperately needs to be vigorously harnessed. It has too big a role to play in the formulation of foreign policy, and foreign policy is too important to be left up to foreign service officers.

Nominating Susan Rice for Secretary of State is a mistake not just because of her Sunday show deceptions but because her tenure as America's representative to the U.N. has been unworthy of a promotion.

We had Hillary Clinton try and do a reset. We had Hillary Clinton give Russia 20% of the uranium in our country.

The [Donald] Trump folks chose not to keep [Dan Fried] on. He was actually - I said he was actually the third-most senior diplomat in the foreign service.

[Dan Fried] served six presidents over a 40-year career dating back to the [Jimmy] Carter administration.

I think Donald Trump needs to be very clear to Vladimir Putin. Let's try to discover areas we can work together. That's fine. We're two a world power. They're a great power arguably. But at the same time we're not going to give any ground. We have to defend our NATO allies.

Rudolph Giuliani will be the first Secretary of State whose last public office was mayor, the most thoroughly domestic public office that we have.

John Kerry knows more about more subjects than an awful lot of people. But I think it's a very hard job [Secretary of State].

America's civilian institutions of diplomacy and development have been chronically undermanned and underfunded for far too long.

[Dan fried] is the department's foremost Russia expert and he, too, is now leaving at a time when arguably the State Department needs it most, the State Department will not have the benefit of his insight going forward.

Hillary Clinton said her number one priority was a reset with Russia. That reset resulted in the invasion of Ukraine.

Hillary Clinton's top priority when she became secretary of state was the Russian reset. The Russian reset. After the Russian reset, the Russians invaded Ukraine and took over Crimea.

If our country got along with Russia, that would be a great thing. When Putin goes out and tells everybody - and you talk about a relationship, but he says Donald Trump is going to win and Donald Trump is a genius, and then I have people saying you should disavow. I said, I'm going to disavow that?

Once again, as a flawed evaluator of dictators and failed strategist who has permitted Russia back in as a major player in the Middle East, is Hillary Clinton guilty or not guilty?

I think that Russia is very aware that they are on notice when it comes to certain issues. They are very aware that we do want to try and defeat ISIS together, if that's at all possible, along with our allies. But there's no love or anything going on with Russia right now. They get that we're getting our strength back, that we're getting our voice back, and that we're starting to lead again. And honestly, at the United Nations, that's the number one comment I get is they're just so happy to see the United States lead again.

An ambassador is an honest man sent abroad to lie for his country.

We don't discuss this issue [conversations with Russia] as a government, but we discuss the repercussions, which is more important because sometimes repercussions could be more destroying than the strike itself.