Top 15 Richard Holbrooke Quotes

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

I’m a product of the Kennedy era. Kennedy’s Inaugural plus the accident of Dean Rusk brought me into the government. Those were my values.

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

People in uniform are not sacrosanct. They don’t have all the answers. The use of force is a political decision at its core, in terms of its objectives; then the military, as the experts, must be brought in to tell you how to do it.

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

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

Nothing generates more heat in the government than the question of who is chosen to participate in important meetings.

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

I think history is continuous. It doesn’t begin or end on Pearl Harbor Day or the day Lyndon Johnson withdraws from the presidency or on 9/11. You have to learn from the past but not be imprisoned by it. You need to take counsel of history but never be imprisoned by it.

Elections are rarely perfect.

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.

In short, you can’t let the deadline define the mission. The mission has to define the duration.

The United States supports the reintegration of people who have fought with the Taliban into Afghan society provided they: one, renounce al Qaeda, two, lay down their arms and renounce violence, and three, participate in the public political life of the country in accordance with the constitution.

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.

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