Luke Roberts Quotes

I had some training on how to cope with hostage-taking.

I think, in general, we've created an environment where we've done away with the sort of day-to-day training that's necessary, including crisis intervention, behavioral health training - the kinds of things that we know that both protect officers and the community - and moved away to a highly military, advanced SWAT team mentality.

There's a lot of stuff they don't teach you in the mythical editors' school. They don't teach you that you're going to have to spend a lot of your life in crisis management.

The occupant should take all due and needful measures to restore and ensure public order and public safety.

War room

I've always thought that I'd make a pretty good police officer, except maybe for the danger part. I have a rare medical condition that makes it difficult for me to risk getting shot, so probably I'd have to be one of those officers who work in 'do not shoot' areas.

You really have to act on the force, too. You're involved in a hundred things a day, and you have to react in a hundred different ways, depending on what's going on. And you learn that as you go through your career, how you handle certain situations, interrogations, how you carry yourself. There's a kind of acting to it.

If your plane is being hijacked by an armed man who, though prepared to take risks, presumably wants to go on living, there is room for bargaining.

I was on the SWAT team in the FBI, and I had always wanted to be in SWAT.

The United States government does not negotiate with terrorists.

Hale looked at Macey, who added, "Seven minutes since shots fired." "Kat what's the emergency response tie in Midtown Manhattan?" "Not long enough if they want a clean exit," she told him. Macey hadn't heard Kat's words, but she looked at Hale like she'd read his mind.

I have always said that a conference was held for one reason only, to give everybody a chance to get sore at everybody else. Sometimes it takes two or three conferences to scare up a war, but generally one will do it.

I urge everyone to be patient and reasonable and I warn against shooting from the hip in the truest sense of the term. Pressure and dialogue are needed.

In Washington, as we learned from the White House transcripts, a president may speak of kicking butts, call a problem a can of worms, decide not to be in the position of basically hunkering down, anticipate something hitting the fan, propose to tough it through, sight minefields down the road, see somebody playing hard ball, claim political savvy, and wonder what stroke some of his associates have with others.

I like what Abba Eban once said during the 1967 war. He said, "When all else fails, men turn to reason."

Troubleshooters?" Michael asked. "When there's trouble," I told him, "they shoot it.

Kennedy was trying to keep us out of war. I was trying to help him keep us out of war. And General Curtis LeMay, whom I served under as a matter of fact in World War II, was saying "Let's go in, let's totally destroy Cuba."

The best deal that Barack Obama can get will not be the best deal to be had because he's weak and indecisive.

What people generally tell you is, "We'll all agree," and then once you sign, they expect to get their own way. I think it was a bit of a surprise that I was still very headstrong even after signing. I wasn't so happy to get a deal that I would agree to anything. In fact, I disagreed on most things and got my way on most things, which I think was to all of our benefit. But they wanted the record to come out, and I wanted the record to come out, so we had to work together.

Diplomacy is much more than just talking to your friends... You've got to talk to people who aren't our friends, and even people you dislike.

In diplomacy, clear-cut wins and losses are rare.

During negotiations nothing is gained by attacking people's comfort zones.

I'm not a professional politician. I'm a professional problem solver.

When negotiations are at an impasse, when States dig their heels in, it is time to 'undig' them in a spirit of compromise. We all need to unlearn the predator in us, unlearn discrimination, unlearn privilege.

As crises came up later on - "Oh, we have to compromise, and the record company wants to do this," I'd be like, "No, I don't have to."