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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Oftentimes, when constituencies or sectors of opinion are distinct, when they are confronted with a situation where they're going to have to make a serious compromise, they react very negatively publicly, but they also recognize when they step back that this is right.

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

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.

I would argue that's because we had a bunch of smart people running around here. They were coming in and working very hard and many of them had left jobs in which they made significantly more money.

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, backwards thinking in the kind of rural Western areas you see in, you know, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico.

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.

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 weve already been seeing in Colorado continue.

"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."

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.

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.

From my subjective position, there was no honeymoon.

"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."

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 world has become rapidly more competitive.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

"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."

"One of the governor's complaints: federal rules that prohibit dispensary owners from putting their money in banks. "If you really want to introduce corruption into legal marijuana," he said, make it an all cash business."

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

"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."

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.

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

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

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

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.

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!