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Cultural constraints condition and limit our choices, shaping our characters with their imperatives.

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
Characters
Conditions
Shaping
Choices
Imperatives
Character
Constraints
Limit
Cultural
Condition
Limits

More quotes by Jeane Kirkpatrick

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I think that there is absolutely no free market in modern industrial states.
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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I think that it's always appropriate for Americans and for American foreign policy to make clear why we feel that self-government is most compatible with peace, the well-being of people, and human dignity
Jeane Kirkpatrick
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I think that Ronald Reagan wanted to hear other people's views, and he always listened carefully, and from time to time he changed his own mind about a position. And especially he took pains to listen carefully to foreign leaders with whom he was dealing.
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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There is an absolutely fundamental hostility on the part of totalitarian regimes toward religion.
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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Look, I don't even agree with myself at times.
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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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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Mr. President, we've taken off our Kick Me sign.
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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A government is not legitimate merely because it exists.
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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Solidarity was the movement that turned the direction of history, I think.
Jeane Kirkpatrick
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I'm a political scientist and I study these things, and I know that economic problems, with the rising unemployment and inflation and low productivity and so forth, were a factor in that election, in that defeat of President Carter.
Jeane Kirkpatrick
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There is no pure free-market economy.
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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No idea holds greater sway in the minds of educated Americans that the belief that it is possible to democratize governments anytime and anywhere under any circumstances.
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