Richard Holbrooke Quotes

It’s an improvisation on a theme. You know where you want to go, but you don’t know how to get there. It’s not linear.

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.

United Nations peacekeepers are going all over the world spreading AIDS even while they’re trying to bring peace. What a supreme irony.

A world without the United Nations or with a paralyzed United Nations would be far more costly to all of us and far more dangerous to peace and stability.

A peace deal requires agreements, and you don’t make agreements with your friends, you make agreements with your enemies.

Our enemy is Al Qaeda and its allies, people who have publicly said they wish to attack the United States again, people who have publicly called on nuclear physicists and engineers to help them gain access to nuclear weapons, which, as the whole world knows, Pakistan has.

World War I was not inevitable, as many historians say. It could have been avoided, and it was a diplomatically botched negotiation.

The controlled chaos is one way to get creativity. The intensity of it, the physical rush, the intimacy created the kind of dialogue that leads to synergy…

Diplomacy is like jazz: endless variations on a theme.

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.

Know something about something. Don’t just present your wonderful self to the world. Constantly amass knowledge and offer it around.

As countries grapple with modernization, people who are left behind tend to hold firmer and firmer to their view of the evil of modernity.