Richard Holbrooke Quotes

I view the traditional two parties as in some ways very evil. They've become monsters that are out of control. The two parties don't have in mind what's best for Minnesota. The only things that are important to them are their own agendas and their pork. Government's become just a battle of power between the two parties.

There is only one thing that gives me hope as a Republican, and that is the Democrats. It's going to be hard to do a worse job running American than the Republicans have, but if anybody can do it, it's the Democrats.

There's a lot of bipartisan rancor, a lot of excessive delegation of legislative power from the legislative branch to the executive branch.

In America today, unfortunately, the right wing has been totally commandeered by the Tea Party, and it's a bad thing for our party.

We have a two-party system: The Democratic Party, which is a party of no ideas, and the Republican Party, which is a party of bad ideas.

You can't have the legislative and executive branch working in a parallel universe...the partisanship that has gripped Washington has prevented us from dealing with the issues that this country needs to grapple with to determine its future.

To call an individual from private life in order that he may preside over the interests of millions; to invest him with the various dignified functions, and the extensive patronage which appertain to a station so exalted; to secure as completely as possible, the free exercise of the people's rights; to discourage and prevent the artifices of party, and of individual ambition; and to accomplish all this by means of a fixed and practicable system which should neither be misunderstood, perverted nor resisted, was a task of no small difficulty.

Republicans hate government ... So they let us Democrats run it for them.

There isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between politicians of either major party.

Definition of Moron: What the Republicans would call George W. Bush if he were the Democratic President

Democrats legislate; Republicans investigate.

There are but two divisions of party in the United States; and he is a very weak or very presumptuously vain man who can think of organizing a third party that shall rule them both.

A popular assembly without parties--500 isolated individuals--cannot stand five years against a Minister with an organized Government without becoming a servile Senate.

You cannot choose between party government and Parliamentary government. I say, you can have no Parliamentary government if you have no party government; and, therefore, when Gentlemen denounce party government, they strike at that scheme of government which, in my opinion, has made this country great, and which I hope will keep it great.

The House Republicans are not the enemy, they’re the opposition. The Senate is the enemy.

We have this civil war at home between our own version of Shiites and Sunnis called Republicans and Democrats…

The cleavages Trump has revealed are too deep

The Republicans are the party that says that government doen't work, and then they get elected and prove it.

The president was not the most important political player in the 19th century. Besides Jefferson at the beginning, Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln, the center of politics was Congress.

We all went up to Washington on a mission to change things. What I found is that the Founding Fathers set it up where it's a little more difficult to do. We've got the Senate and the president to deal with.

The U.S. cannot survive another four years of the Barack Obama-Hillary Clinton regime.

If anything, the Democrats' salvation may lie in the fact that Republicans seem even more hell-bent on allowing their radical wing to drag the party away from the center.

The American political system is based on the president taking the initiative and Congress responding. With President Trump, it's been the opposite.

The Republicans have bought into the idea that people hate them because they're opposed to everything.

Growing up in the 1980s, I remember when the GOP was the party of ideas. Now it's brain dead.