Bureaucracies have a natural tendency not to cooperate, coordinate or consolidate with each other. They won't cooperate with each other - unless… — Richard Holbrooke Copy Share Image
Nothing generates more heat in the government than the question of who is chosen to participate in important meetings. — Richard Holbrooke Copy Share Image
I'm a product of the Kennedy era. Kennedy's Inaugural plus the accident of Dean Rusk brought me into the government. Those were… — Richard Holbrooke Copy Share Image
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. — Richard Holbrooke Copy Share Image
There are certain kinds of second-tier confrontations which the U.S. does not need to get directly involved in. However, even in the second tier… — Richard Holbrooke Copy Share Image
I think Americans understand that in Afghanistan, unlike in Iraq and Vietnam, we are fighting an enemy allied with the people who attacked us… — Richard Holbrooke Copy Share Image
You have to test your hypothesis against other theories. Certainty in the face of complex situations is very dangerous. — Richard Holbrooke Copy Share Image
United Nations peacekeepers are going all over the world spreading AIDS even while they're trying to bring peace. What a supreme irony. — Richard Holbrooke Copy Share Image
In diplomacy, as in life itself, one often learns more from failures than from successes. Triumphs will seem, in retrospect, to be foreordained, a… — Richard Holbrooke Copy Share Image
The United States supports the reintegration of people who have fought with the Taliban into Afghan society provided they: one, renounce al Qaeda, two,… — Richard Holbrooke Copy Share Image
World War I was not inevitable, as many historians say. It could have been avoided, and it was a diplomatically botched negotiation. — Richard Holbrooke Copy Share Image
You will never catch up with the spread of AIDS no matter how much money, no matter how many antiretrovirals are put into the… — Richard Holbrooke Copy Share Image
A peace deal requires agreements, and you don't make agreements with your friends, you make agreements with your enemies. — Richard Holbrooke Copy Share Image
We should not be surprised that democracy is imperfect even in Western countries. — Richard Holbrooke Copy Share Image
