Top 90 John Hickenlooper Quotes

Most of us have faced a – faced a serious budget problem or another at some pivotal moment in our lives.

America’s greatness has always been demonstrated by our moral leadership.

After college, I became a geologist, mapping what lay beneath the earth’s surface. I thought I had my life pretty figured out and all my boxes checked. But then, I was laid off – along with thousands of other geologists. I lost not only my job, but also my profession.

Since Day 1 of his candidacy, Donald Trump has divided our country and threatened our democracy, attacked the middle class and alienated our allies. Under his administration, real people are being hurt.

Many of the basic lessons of business, such as the critical value of customer service or measuring risk against reward when investing capital, have essential application in government, but not in a vacuum.

From the first day we opened Wynkoop, my brewpub in Denver, I knew I’d be ten times better running a restaurant than I was a geologist.

I think, in this country, if you work 40 hours a week, and you work hard, you ought to be able to afford an apartment somewhere.

When someone’s kind of a braggart to the bully… it makes me on edge just because I live that, and I don’t think that’s a model we want for our kids in this country.

Taxpayers don’t want their money spent more than a very, very slender amount on actual buying art or paying for concerts.

I could easily say that, for quite a long time before I became mayor, I had obeyed all laws.

Too often, low-income Americans must choose between paying for medicine and having their heat shut off.

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.

While some people simply want to villainize the private sector, the fact is that the private sector drives jobs growth; we need to channel the energy and innovation of employers to generate opportunities for the entire labor market.

You never see Coke and Pepsi doing attacks to each other. It would depress the product category of soft drinks.

In trying times, Coloradans do what we always have done: pull together and get it done.

Even as we continue to carry the banner of civil rights and environmental justice, we’ve also got to focus on many, many people – for them, life starts with a good job.

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.

Wellington Webb was one of the most significant mayors of the latter half of the 20th century. His natural political instincts are almost unrivaled.

Giving all of Denver’s kids an equal chance at success is the best investment we can make in our community’s kids and future.

It should be a badge of shame to have an A-rating from the NRA.

In the restaurant business, you learn quickly there’s no margin in having enemies.

A fundamental way to build and expand our middle class and economy is to create a modern and well-paid workforce.

This country is built on free speech.

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.

In the restaurant business, you never want to have enemies, whereas it seems that many politicians judge their success by how high their enemies are and whether they can show that they can hold their ground and give a punch for every punch they take.

Colorado has always been a good place to find what you’re made of.

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.

The one thing that I don’t think the Obama administration gets anywhere near enough credit for is the high level of administrators. They meet all the time so they can synergize the federal investments. That’s the way any corporation would do it.

Almost all government starts at a very local level at some point.

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.

If I can convince people that good people don’t do attack ads, and that we want good people to represent us, then the attack ads work against themselves.

I’ve made several careers out of people underestimating me – it’s almost an advantage worth cultivating.

I used to make snap judgments, moved quickly. It’s more important to be thoughtful, think of the consequences of your decisions.

Infrastructure investments lead to jobs. And quality of life starts with a good job.

Politics generally doesn’t mix with sports very well.

Now, I’ve never hosted a reality TV show, but I know the true mark of a successful businessman is not the number of times you say, ‘You’re fired.’ It’s the number times you say, ‘You’re hired.’

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.

It is a sad reality that active shooter drills are a standard way of life for kids as young as pre-school.

The world has become rapidly more competitive.

When people think of the West, it’s easy to envision wagon trains, Buffalo Bill, the glory days of the Gold Rush. Cowboy hats come to mind.

Money isn’t everything, but the gaps between rich districts and poor districts ultimately mean a workforce that won’t be as competitive as it could be, and individual Coloradans won’t be as successful as they could be.

I was skinny. I wore thick glasses. I had acne.

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.

Is there some risk every day we walk out our front door? Every time we get in our car? Yeah. Are we materially less safe now than we were 10 years ago? Whatever delta there is, it’s very small.

There could have been more planning in New Orleans, but you look at all the devastation that happened there – have we gotten to 3,000 deaths yet? For that magnitude of a disaster, that’s not all that bad.

Colorado needs a governor who brings people together to create jobs and cut government spending.

Government requires bringing people together and genuinely hearing their issues. It requires the establishment and strengthening of community.

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.

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.

We will see the increasingly rapid rate of growth we’ve already been seeing in Colorado continue.

Governor Kasich and I won’t agree on everything, but agree we’ve got to control the rise in health care costs on all levels.

We need to recognize that we can’t allow people that are aberrations of nature to take away the joys and freedoms that we enjoy.

I loved baseball. I was a pitcher. I loved being on the mound because I also loved being at the center of the action, the cat and mouse battle with the batter on every pitch. You had to develop grit.

Being the one person out there committed to not running negative ads – voters respond to that.

The Affordable Care Act was passed in large part because of recognition that our nation’s health care system is not working. The act is not perfect, but it is a starting point, and we have been using it to improve the health of Coloradans.

To a certain extent, people’s behavior in a campaign is generally a reflection of how they would act in office.

Democracy is based upon empathy and the recognition that some decisions are solely for the community’s benefit without regard to one’s own narrow self-interest.

I’m not sure there’s another way to help move more people out of poverty than to raise the minimum wage.

If people think that Colorado is a beacon for artists and creative people who are really talented, I think they’re going to be a little happier during the day, and I think they’re going to be a little more successful at their job, no matter what their job is.

What I remember most vividly was the sense of always being a little behind the other kids in class – that sense of I wasn’t cut out for class or I wasn’t cut out to read.