Quotes from Joseph Robinette

The carnage was over, but there was still a bitter taste in my mouth.

It required a lot less energy, intelligence, and competence to run against government than to try to make government work.

A better man might have handled the situation with more grace than I did. A better man would have been able to separate his personal life from his career.

Just because our political heroes were murdered does not mean that the dream does not still live, buried deep in our broken hearts.

For the world to follow, we must do more than rattle our sabers and demand allegienace to our vision simply because we believe we are right. We must provide a reason for others to aspire to that vision. And that reason must come with more than the repetition of a bumper-sticker phrase about freedom and democracy. It must come with more than the restatement of failed policy. It must come with the wisdom to admit when we are wrong and resolve to change course and get it right.

It was that hard; I still feel that way. But I believe that President Bush failed to lead. History will judge him harshly not for the mistakes he made- we all make mistakes- but for the opportunities he squandered.

Given Iraq's strategic location, its large oil reserves, and the suffering of the Iraqi people, we cannot afford to replace a despot with chaos. It would be a tragedy if we removed a tyrant in Iraq only to leave chaos in its wake.

I learned later that the surgeon who put Dole back together after he was so badly injured in World War II was an Armenian whose family had deep memories of the genocidal campaign the Turks had waged against them.

There is never a time when a president can act to stop a tragedy from occurring without being held politically accountable one way or the other. If he does it and fails, he's wrong. If he does it and succeeds, he was never right because it didn't happen. If we go in and stop an act of genocide, we can't prove what we stopped.

I think you're a damn war criminal and you should be tried as one.

My own father had always said the measure of a man wasn't how many times or how hard he got knocked down, but how fast he got back up.

I, too, believe there are natural rights that predate any written political or legal documents; we have these rights merely because we're children of God.

No matter how well intended our country is, we cannot expect other nations to trust us as much as we trust ourselves.

A convicted felon who had strong family ties, a stake in the community, and an education might get probation, while a man who had few family ties, little stake in the community, and little education might draw a ten-year sentence for the same crime.