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A government is not legitimate merely because it exists.

Jeane Kirkpatrick

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Jeane Kirkpatrick
Age: 80 †
Born: 1926
Born: November 19
Died: 2006
Died: December 7
Diplomat
Political Scientist
Politician
United States Ambassador To The United Nations
University Teacher
Duncan
Oklahoma
Jeane Jordan Kirkpatrick
Jeane Duane Kirkpatrick
Legitimate
Libertarian
Exists
Merely
Liberty
Political
Government

More quotes by Jeane Kirkpatrick

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We have war when at least one of the parties to a conflict wants something more than it wants peace.
Jeane Kirkpatrick
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Neither nature, experience, nor probability informs these lists of 'entitlements', which are subject to no constraints except those of the mind and appetite of their authors.
Jeane Kirkpatrick
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Democrats can't get elected unless things get worse-and things won't get worse unless they get elected.
Jeane Kirkpatrick
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Americans need to face the truth about themselves, no matter how pleasant it is.
Jeane Kirkpatrick
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A doctrine of class war seemed to provide a solution to the problem of poverty to people who know nothing about how wealth is created
Jeane Kirkpatrick
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And I think detente had manifestly failed, and that the pursuit of it was encouraging Soviet expansion and rendering the world more dangerous, and especially rendering the Western world in greater peril.
Jeane Kirkpatrick
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When the San Francisco Democrats treat foreign affairs as an afterthought, as they did, they behaved less like a dove or a hawk than like an ostrich - convinced it could shut out the world by hiding its head in the sand.
Jeane Kirkpatrick
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I believe that detente was having almost the opposite effect of what was intended. What was intended was to sort of end the contest for power and to stop Soviet expansion, especially by military means and the military build-up, the military contest
Jeane Kirkpatrick
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Vietnam presumably taught us that the United States could not serve as the world's policeman it should also have taught us the dangers of trying to be the world's midwife to democracy when the birth is scheduled to take place under conditions of guerrilla war.
Jeane Kirkpatrick
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Truth, which is important to a scholar, has to be concrete. And there is nothing more concrete than dealing with babies, burps and bottles, frogs and mud.
Jeane Kirkpatrick
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Cultural constraints condition and limit our choices, shaping our characters with their imperatives.
Jeane Kirkpatrick
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There is no pure free-market economy.
Jeane Kirkpatrick
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The speed with which armies collapse, bureaucracies abdicate, and social structures dissolve once the autocrat is removed frequently surprises American Policy makers.
Jeane Kirkpatrick
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That is simply that Marxism has been tremendously fashionable in our time, so it has infected a very large number of major institutions in many countries of the world. So I suppose that we shouldn't be too surprised that it should infect the church as well.
Jeane Kirkpatrick
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I always assume that democracy is the only good form of government, quite frankly, and democracy is always to be preferred
Jeane Kirkpatrick
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And I have no doubt that the American people generally believe the world is safer, and that we are safer, when we are stronger
Jeane Kirkpatrick
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Solidarity was the movement that turned the direction of history, I think.
Jeane Kirkpatrick
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I was a woman in a man's world. I was a Democrat in a Republican administration. I was an intellectual in a world of bureaucrats. I talked differently. This may have made me a bit like an ink blot.
Jeane Kirkpatrick
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In the years just before... during the Carter years, the Soviets regularly violated, if you will, both the spirit and theletter of arms control agreements, I think, that they had negotiated during the period of detente.
Jeane Kirkpatrick
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I think that there is absolutely no free market in modern industrial states.
Jeane Kirkpatrick