Paul Wolfowitz

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

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.

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

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.

Democracy is a process.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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