Paul Wolfowitz Quotes

We don't start a job that we can't finish ... that's the American way.

— Paul Wolfowitz

“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.”

— Paul Wolfowitz

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

— Paul Wolfowitz

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

— Paul Wolfowitz

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

— Paul Wolfowitz

“I like globalization; I want to say it works, but it is hard to say that when six hundred million people are slipping backwards.”

— Paul Wolfowitz

“Support for peaceful reform by the people themselves is the right way to promote democracy, not the use of force.”

— Paul Wolfowitz

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

— Paul Wolfowitz

“I mean, we're going to probably debate the Iraq war for at least as long as I'm alive.”

— Paul Wolfowitz

“Democracy is a process.”

— Paul Wolfowitz

“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.”

— Paul Wolfowitz

I told my father I had to try political science for a year. He thought I was throwing my life away.

— Paul Wolfowitz

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

— Paul Wolfowitz

“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.”

— Paul Wolfowitz

“You can't be involved in healthcare without being involved in the battle against AIDS.”

— Paul Wolfowitz

“Look, I think the notion that there's a dogma or doctrine of foreign policy that gives you a textbook recipe for how to react to all situations is really nonsense.”

— Paul Wolfowitz

“Jobs are a priority for every country. Doing more to improve regulation and help entrepreneurs is the key to creating jobs - and more growth.”

— Paul Wolfowitz

“I think it's a mistake to rely too much on any one economic factor. It's why investors try to spread their portfolio round.”

— Paul Wolfowitz

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

— Paul Wolfowitz

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

— Paul Wolfowitz

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.

— Paul Wolfowitz

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

— Paul Wolfowitz

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

— Paul Wolfowitz

“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.”

— Paul Wolfowitz

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

— Paul Wolfowitz

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

— Paul Wolfowitz

“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.”

— Paul Wolfowitz

“That sense of what happened in Europe in World War II has shaped a lot of my views.”

— Paul Wolfowitz

For the private sector to flourish, special privilege must give way to equal opportunity and equal risk for all.

— Paul Wolfowitz

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

— Paul Wolfowitz

I think, in the longer view of things, there is a very powerful pull in the direction of participatory government.

— Paul Wolfowitz

“I've met quite a few dictators up close and personal in my life.”

— Paul Wolfowitz

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

— Paul Wolfowitz

“Look, I think the public generally understands that what's at stake in Afghanistan is American security, number one.”

— Paul Wolfowitz

“Poles understand perhaps better than anyone the consequences of making toothless warnings to brutal tyrants and terrorist regimes.”

— Paul Wolfowitz

“The American people are pretty impressive in their ability to keep after something if they think it is doable.”

— Paul Wolfowitz

“For one thing I tend not to see myself in various moulds that people fit me into.”

— Paul Wolfowitz

“It is kind of nice to have a common purpose.”

— Paul Wolfowitz

“Public action should seek to expand the set of opportunities of those who have the least voice and fewest resources and capabilities.”

— Paul Wolfowitz

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

— Paul Wolfowitz

“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.”

— Paul Wolfowitz

“Someone once said that history has more imagination than all the scenario writers in the Pentagon, and we have a lot of scenario writers here. No one ever wrote a scenario for commercial airliners crashing into the World Trade Center.”

— Paul Wolfowitz

“China, in the future, is going to have even more nuclear capability than it has had in the past. I don't believe that they have anything to fear from the United States, and I frankly don't believe they do fear the United States.”

— Paul Wolfowitz

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.

— Paul Wolfowitz

I think that all countries that participate in multilateral institutions see the institutions as a way of advancing what they view as their national interests and they see in many cases multi-lateral institution as the best way to do that.

— Paul Wolfowitz

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.

— Paul Wolfowitz

“Iraq has no history of ethnic conflict.”

— Paul Wolfowitz

“There's a lot of money to pay for this ... the oil revenues of that country could bring between $50 and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years ... We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.”

— Paul Wolfowitz

It's hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and secure the surrender of Saddam's security forces and his army. Hard to imagine.

— Paul Wolfowitz