Richard N. Haass Quotes

Things are never so bad they can't be made worse.

It could become much worse.

ʺThings are going to get worse before they get better, arenʹt they?ʺ

Last year we said, 'Things can't go on like this', and they didn't, they got worse.

When written in Chinese, the word 'crisis' is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.

I long ago came to the conclusion that all life is 6 to 5 against.

Pessimism doesn't grow your business or even maintain the status quo. The pessimists on your staff make the job harder for everyone around them. They make difficulties out of opportunities.

I think it's dangerous to be optimistic. Things could go terribly wrong virtually overnight.

I try to be optimistic, but in this business it's so hard. The craziest stuff can happen.

If there is a 50-50 chance that something can go wrong, then 9 times out of ten it will.

Three things can happen when you pass and two of 'em are bad.

What's got badly, goes badly.

I have never yet seen the time in which our affairs, in my opinion, were at so low an ebb as at the present.

Every crisis has within it, opportunity. Every crisis has within it, danger.

When things begin to go bad, the perception of people makes it worse.

I'm not a 'but' man. Nothing good ever comes of that word.

Bad things can happen even to the best players.

Just when you think it can't get any worse, it can.

If anything can go wrong, it will.

Things are never so bad that they can't get worse. But they're sometimes so bad they can't get better.

So what if right now everything is wrong?

Just when you think it can't get any worse, it can. And just when you think it can't get any better, it can.

I'd been in hairier situations than this one. Actually, it's sort of depressing, thinking how many times I'd been in them. But if experience had taught me anything, it was this: No matter how screwed up things are, they can get a whole lot worse.

We're at the top of the cliff and we can either fall off the edge or keep climbing.

True adventure begins when everything goes wrong.