136 Quotes by Richard Holbrooke

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

I know that the Germans are very unhappy about these withdrawals. The Koreans are going to be equally unhappy. How can we withdraw troops from Korea while engaged in a delicate negotiation with the North Koreans? And there's a country that really does have weapons of mass destruction.

You will never catch up with the spread of AIDS no matter how much money, no matter how many antiretrovirals are put into the system, unless you stop its growth. And the only way to stop its growth is prevention.

I'm passionate about this. He's probably the most tested person in the world. Everywhere he travels he gets tested, preferably with the Minister of Health!

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.

I'm sorry I'm unable to go into any details at all-- you'll understand why, ... I can only say that we remain on an intense effort to find a peaceful and satisfactory outcome to what can only be called an emergency while in another part of Europe -- Brussels -- NATO continues to move in a very different form.

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

in no way infringes on sovereignty (or) authority of countries, but shows the collective will of the Security Council.

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