Paul Wolfowitz

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“Democracy is a process.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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