95 Quotes by Ben Rhodes

President Obama has been on the world stage for 10 years, and people know what he believes. He doesn't single out individual countries and doesn't say, 'I believe in LGBT rights because I want to embarrass the political leadership in India.'

I profoundly do not believe that the United States could make things better in Syria by being there. And we have an evidentiary record of what happens when we're there - nearly a decade in Iraq.

We want a rules-based order in Asia-Pacific like we have had in the Atlantic.

Active citizenship doesn't just mean running for office or going into politics; it means starting organisations that promote change or solve a problem, pursuing social good with economic success.

There's this constant narrative of anxieties: Is the U.S. in decline? Is China rising? People forget... no other country is trying to play the role we play. They're not signing up to be responsible for security in the Middle East, responsible for the global economy, responsible for enforcing international norms.

What's interesting about the foreign policy establishment critique is, you know, I think the Blob and I have more in common in some ways than people might think, but also, what I was saying can be misread.

After the separation of children from families seeking to join the United States was embraced as the official policy of our government, we should ask ourselves what story we will tell. President Trump's story is one of cruelty - that we may do something unfathomable to deter families from coming to America.

What I do miss is foreign travel, because there really is no substitute for showing up somewhere and representing the United States.

We don't have to kind of be in cycles of conflict if we can find other ways to resolve these issues. We can do things that challenge the conventional thinking that, you know, 'AIPAC doesn't like this,' or 'the Israeli government doesn't like this,' or 'the Gulf countries don't like it.' It's the possibility of improved relations with adversaries.