Richard Holbrooke Quotes & Sayings (Page 2)

“By the way, if you do your job on behalf of your country, you have meetings where you put your position forward strongly, and the other side does the same thing. And I've had plenty of meetings in my career that really were heated, people yelling at each other.”

“The United Nations is an indispensable but deeply flawed organization. It is valuable to the United States, and the United States is invaluable to it. We need to reform it.”

“Pakistani politics is complicated, and I think it's not something a foreigner can easily assimilate and understand.”

“We should not be surprised that democracy is imperfect even in Western countries.”

“You have to test your hypothesis against other theories. Certainty in the face of complex situations is very dangerous.”

“There's no question that the next generation of terrorists, rather than going for small, little dramas, will go for the big one. They now understand that the way to get the world's attention is not strapping bombs to themselves in a pizza parlour, but to do something so horrific it gets you into the Guinness Book of World Records for terrorism.”

“You will never catch up with the spread of AIDS no matter how much money, no matter how many antiretrovirals are put into the system, unless you stop its growth. And the only way to stop its growth is prevention.”

“I still believe in the possibility of the United States, with all its will and all its strength, and I don't just mean military, persevering against any challenge. I still believe in that.”

“Elections are rarely perfect.”

“I have worked in every - every Democratic administration since the Kennedy administration, and I know dysfunctionality when I see it.”