Albright — the first woman to serve as U.S. Secretary of State — delivered her address on the fiftieth anniversary of George Marshall's Harvard speech announcing the Marshall Plan. She used that anniversary to frame a sweeping argument about American leadership in the post-Cold War world. The line came near the speech's climax, after Albright had laid out two possible futures: 'We will be known as the neo-isolationists who allowed tyranny and lawlessness to rise again; or as the generation that solidified the global triumph of democratic principles. We will be known as the world-class ditherers, who stood by while the seeds of renewed global conflict were sown; or as the generation that took strong measures to forge alliances, deter aggression and keep the peace.' The call to be 'doers' rather than complainers was characteristic of Albright's unsentimental optimism.