Quotes from Richard Holbrooke

Pakistani politics is complicated, and I think it's not something a foreigner can easily assimilate and understand.

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.

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

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

There is a split between Muslims who want to practice their faith in peace and tolerance with other religions and other people, and these extreme, radical fundamentalists who have shown a total lack of tolerance for people with different views, starting with people who they don't think are good Muslims, and going on to include Christians and Jews.

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

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.

The negotiations were simultaneously cerebral and physical, abstract and personal, something like a combination of chess and mountain climbing.

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

People hated to take their disagreements to the President; it was as though a failure to agree somehow reflected badly on each of them, and consensus, rather than clarity, was often the highest goal of the process.

The two Presidents sat opposite each other, while Christopher and I sat side by side on a couch between them; Hill and Galbraith also participated. Their greeting was far warmer than their performance for the press; Milosevic jovially hailed Tudjman as "Franjo." Tudjman called Milosevic "Slobo.

In diplomacy, as in life itself, one often learns more from failures than from successes. Triumphs will seem, in retrospect, to be foreordained, a series of brilliant actions and decisions that may in fact have been lucky or inadvertent, whereas failures illuminate paths and pitfalls to be avoided.

Bosnia is a country," he said with a dry laugh, "where every boy grows up with the dream that someday he will own his own checkpoint.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

There's no question that the next generation of terrorists, rather than going for small, little dramas, will go for the big one. They now understand that the way to get the world's attention is not strapping bombs to themselves in a pizza parlour, but to do something so horrific it gets you into the Guinness Book of World Records for terrorism.

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

The World War II generation believed the United States could do anything - anything... And Vietnam was a shattering experience for everyone.

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

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 of problems, our intervention as a friend to both sides is important.