Madeleine Albright

United States Secretary of State from 1997 to 2001

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Lived 1937–2022, aged 85

Wikipedia
86 languages
Cross-language footprint
Era
1937–2022
Aged 85
Known for
The Final Year
2018

Summary

Updated 2026-06-09

She broke the highest diplomatic ceiling in American government: first woman to run the State Department, steering foreign policy through the final years of the Clinton administration while the post-Cold War order was still taking shape.

Biography

About

Born in Prague in 1937, she fled Czechoslovakia after the 1948 communist coup, her diplomat father resettling the family in Denver. She became a U.S. citizen in 1957, graduated from Wellesley, and earned a PhD from Columbia in 1975 with a thesis on the Prague Spring. She worked for Senator Edmund Muskie, then joined the National Security Council under Zbigniew Brzezinski until Carter left office in 1981. She taught at Georgetown through the 1980s and advised Democratic campaigns on foreign policy. After the 1992 election she helped assemble Clinton's National Security Council, then served as U…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Madeleine Albright

Madeleine Albright

said13 Jul 2006

There is a special place in hell for women who don't help other women.

— Keynote speech at "Celebrating Inspiration" luncheon with the WNBA's All-Decade Team, quoted in Mechelle Voepel, ESPN (July 13, 2006)

Madeleine Albright

said19 Oct 2005

I never should have made it. It was stupid.

— Comment on Stahl interview, BBC Radio 4 Today Programme (October 19, 2005)

Madeleine Albright

said2004

Mahmoud Abbas is a puppet.

— (BBC HARDTALK 17-MAY-2004) uncut version.

Madeleine Albright

said2003

My deepest regret from my years in public service is the failure of the United States and the international community to act sooner to halt these crimes.

— Comment on the Rwandan Genocide in Madam Secretary (2003), p. 147.

Madeleine Albright

said2003