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

A government is not legitimate merely because it exists.

Jeane Kirkpatrick

liberty political government

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

ink intellectual men

Words can destroy. What we call each other ultimately becomes what we think of each other, and it matters.

Jeane Kirkpatrick

healing matter thinking

Democrats can't get elected unless things get worse-and things won't get worse unless they get elected.

Jeane Kirkpatrick

republican political humorous

I conclude that it is a fundamental mistake to think that salvation, justice, or virtue come through merely human institutions.

Jeane Kirkpatrick

umpires mistake thinking

What takes place in the Security Council more closely resembles a mugging than either a political debate or an effort at problem-solving.

Jeane Kirkpatrick

effort political problem

History is a better guide than good intentions.

Jeane Kirkpatrick

good-intentions women history

When Marxist dictators shoot their way into power in Central America, the Democrats don't blame the guerrillas and their Soviet allies, they blame United States' policies of one hundred years ago, but then they always blame America first.

Jeane Kirkpatrick

war america years

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

bottles important baby

For all their faults, right-wing authoritarian regimes more easily accept democratic reforms than left-wing totalitarian states.

Jeane Kirkpatrick

faults wings war

The absence of utopianism in the Constitution, law, and traditional political culture has been ... important in limiting expectations concerning what can be achieved by politics. The history of the last two centuries confirms what the framers of the Constitution understood: that the perfect is the enemy of the good, and the search for unalloyed virtue in public life leads to unalloyed terror.

Jeane Kirkpatrick

law perfect two

Democracy not only requires equality but also an unshakable conviction in the value of each person, who is then equal. Cross cultural experience teaches us not simply that people have different beliefs, but that people seek meaning and understand themselves in some sense as members of a cosmos ruled by God.

Jeane Kirkpatrick

democracy different people

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

taught-us military war

Mr. President, we've taken off our "Kick Me" sign.

Jeane Kirkpatrick

kicks taken president

Americans need to face the truth about themselves, no matter how pleasant it is.

Jeane Kirkpatrick

matter faces needs

Tyranny and anarchy are alike incompatible with freedom, security, and the enjoyment of opportunity.

Jeane Kirkpatrick

helping-others opportunity people

Look, I don't even agree with myself at times.

Jeane Kirkpatrick

agree looks

All of us confront limits of body, talent, temperament. But that is not all. We are, all of us, also constrained by our time, our place, our civilization.

Jeane Kirkpatrick

body limits civilization

Democracy not only requires equality but also an unshakable conviction in the value of each person, who is then equal

Jeane Kirkpatrick

equality conviction democracy

Power ... is not an end in itself, but is an instrument that must be used toward an end.

Jeane Kirkpatrick

used ends power