Zitat des Tages von John Hickenlooper:
For me, the risks in terms of opening that brewpub were fairly high. I put my house up as collateral, I invested the liquid money I had and two years of my time to get it over, but that's really not much of a risk for what the potential reward was if it worked.
Given that, and assuming that we begin to adjust to issues like climate change and the greenhouse effect, Denver's location in the center of the country becomes a tremendous advantage.
Of everyone else who was running, and there were some very talented people, none of them had anywhere near the experience I had in hiring people, holding them accountable, creating systems for accountability.
I would argue that one of the issues which the public should be much more emphatic about with all politicians... is patronage, appointing people to high positions because they supported your campaign or helped you raise money.
We will see the increasingly rapid rate of growth we've already been seeing in Colorado continue.
One's ability to enter into thousands of lawsuits as a tool for success, or to use bankruptcy to avoid paying your former employees and vendors, have little relevance when trying to create good government.
Some day, someone will do something wrong and there will be a scandal to report in the paper. When that happens, we will address it honestly and openly and try to deal with it as quickly and as fairly as we can, and keep moving the city forward.
A mayor is a symbol and a public face of what a city bureaucracy provides its citizens.
I think I was in 10th or 11th grade before I ever read a book for pleasure.
I think we're in good shape, but the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina is in some small way mitigated by the fact that we now have more people talking about it, thinking about it and working on it, so that we will be more vigilant and ready.
If it was really successful, it was a life calling, a career I was excited about doing, so I didn't think the overall risk was anywhere near as high as what the reward was.
The most important thing a mayor does is hire talented people to run the city.
Today we're dealing with metropolitan Shanghai, metropolitan New Delhi or Paris. If we're competing at that level, our diversity, that richness of people coming from so many different backgrounds, is one of our greatest advantages.
People turn off the news, stop reading in-depth magazine articles - especially young people. Look at the increasing reluctance of young people to vote. I think a lot of that is directly - you can lay it at the feet of these negative campaigns and relentless attack ads.
Most of us have faced a - faced a serious budget problem or another at some pivotal moment in our lives.
Voters are tired of us kicking the can down the road, because they know it's going to land in a pothole.
We are, by many measures, one of the more diverse cities in the country, growing more diverse all the time, and one of the more harmonious in terms of how we live together.
Isolationism is not leadership.
From my subjective position, there was no honeymoon.
If you don't trust the media, they are not going to trust you, and if they don't trust you, it's hard for the public to trust you.
My father had a handgun on the bedside table, and we were all taught to handle firearms.
Colorado needs a governor who brings people together to create jobs and cut government spending.
I never ran for student council or class president or any of that stuff. I didn't hang out with those people. It was just a different universe from the one I inhabited.
In 1999, I found myself the unlikely leader of a community-based effort to protect what was arguably Colorado's most important brand, and one once thought to be untouchable: the 'Mile High' part of Denver's Mile High Stadium.
I've made several careers out of people underestimating me - it's almost an advantage worth cultivating.
And if I lost I would have gone back to 12 weeks of vacation, because I was successful enough that I was spending much more time on non-profit boards and traveling a lot.
Especially during the first nine months, there was so much going on with trying to hire 55 people to run the city, it was hard to imagine any honeymoon.
Colorado is a state that people like to be themselves and solve their own problems.
Last, in restaurants you spend a lot of time dealing with people who are very unhappy. Soup has been spilled on their laps, they've waited 10 minutes to get their check so they can leave, and you learn how to listen, I think, in a much more proactive way than government does.
I used to make snap judgments, moved quickly. It's more important to be thoughtful, think of the consequences of your decisions.
I assume we will have figured out a way to efficiently utilize solar energy and tied that to an efficient way to use nuclear energy in such a way that it doesn't pose a serious environmental issue.
You looked at Stanford or Harvard, or the University of Colorado, these were powerful engines just turning out people ready to create and grow businesses.
Any businessman will tell you that transportation is fundamental to success.
Denver is a city that will be far more defined by its future than its past.
I believe that the more this hemisphere operates with a sense of common purpose, I think the better we'll all do.
Whenever I've met with businesses that want to locate in Colorado, the state's infrastructure for moving people and products is a top concern.