John Hickenlooper Quotes

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.

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

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.

From my subjective position, there was no honeymoon.

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.

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.

"On what motivated Colorado voters: "Let's face it, the War on Drugs was a disaster. It may be well intentioned ... but it sent millions of kids to prison, gave them felonies often times when they had no violent crimes ... I was against this, but I can see why so many people supported it."

A mayor is a symbol and a public face of what a city bureaucracy provides its citizens.

Denver is a city that will be far more defined by its future than its past.

"On unanticipated problems: There's been "a dramatic increase in edibles." And "no one had ever worried about dosage sizes. The original edibles that came out, once you took the packaging off there was nothing to show it was any different than candy."

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.

"As Colorado attempts to build its brand as a healthy state, marijuana "dilutes what you're trying to do."

I may not have voted for Donald Trump, but I'm an American first. My entire administration is going to do everything we can to make him as successful as we can.

America is always attracting people, from all over the earth.

I look at some of the things that Donald Trump will do around cutting red tape, reducing bureaucracy, helping entrepreneurs, helping businesses grow more rapidly, more access to capital - I'm all for it. That's all stuff that I've been trying to do in Colorado.

"One of the governor's concerns: "This high-THC marijuana, what can it do to a brain that is still developing?"

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.

"I think decriminalization would've been a wiser first step."

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.

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.

There's nothing wrong with the Democratic Party that talks more about - and more loudly about - jobs, and cutting red tape, and bureaucracy, making it easier for entrepreneurs to start jobs, making it easier for businesses to grow and create more jobs. That has historically been the wheelhouse of the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party is always going to be the party of civil rights and fairness - everybody gets an equal, fair shot at the American dream. And we're going to be the party that really fights to protect planet Earth - enjoy whatever time we're going to get!

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

The issue that a political campaign would make a human life into - you know - a political football, is unsettling.

I think the political reality for the Democratic Party is, you know, there are two sides. There's one side saying that we weren't liberal enough and another side saying we're too liberal. I think they're both right.

Medicaid is one of the rare times where Democratic governors are saying, "Hey, states' rights." We don't want the federal government coming in and telling us how to do our environmental remediation or how we're going to do our healthcare.

People don't realize that almost two-thirds of the population in the United States lives in a state where either medical or recreational marijuana are now legal. Two-thirds of the country. I am looking at it as kind of a 10th Amendment, states'-rights issue.

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.

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.

I think a couple things, I mean, you know, the tragic death of Matthew Shepard occurred in Wyoming. Colorado and Wyoming are very similar. We have some of the same, you know, backward-thinking in the kind of rural Western areas you see in, you know, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico.

"One of the best things about marijuana legalization: "I think the black market has been damaged. I think people are willing to pay taxes and to go through pretty rigorous regulation."

We have a responsibility and an obligation to do everything we can to try to make this work.

If you really want to introduce corruption into legal marijuana, make it an all cash business.

We have tax revenue that's going to allow us to look in a much more comprehensive way at intervening in addiction.

Some of the anxiety has been laid to rest. We don't see a spike in adult use. We don't think we see a spike in youth consumption although there are some things that are disconcerting.