Nothing generates more heat in the government than the question of who is chosen to participate in important meetings. — Richard Holbrooke Copy Share Image
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… — 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
