Mahatma Gandhi Quotes

If you can’t bring the people with you, you lose the policy

The reality of split government puts a premium on creativity within the administration. President Obama needs to put the right people in charge of the agencies and then have them push the bounds of administrative power to change policy through those agencies. President Obama has a pretty good track record of this.

It is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.

There will always be voices that basically say: Unless it's the perfect solution, we want no solution. That is unrealistic.

A political ideology is a very handy thing to have. It’s a real time saver because it tells you what you think about things you know nothing about.

It is time to put policy ahead of politics and success ahead of the status quo.

We can only be right with and by the Party, for history has provided no other way of being in the right... And if the Party adopts a decision which one or other of us thinks unjust, he will say, just or unjust, it is my party, and I shall support the consequences of the decision to the end.

People at the political extremes have an advantage over the rest of us. Only they seem to know exactly who and what is wrong with America and precisely what policies and programs should be adopted to fix it.

Successful and unsuccessful political policies have one commonalty. The people who created the policies thought they would be successful.

Looking back at the worst times, it always seems that they were times in which there were people who believed with absolute faith and absolute dogmatism in something. And they were so serious in this matter that they insisted that the rest of the world agree with them. And then they would do things that were directly inconsistent with their own beliefs in order to maintain that what they said was true.

Governing is about selecting.

We can be or become wise in all matters of secondary importance, but we have to be resigned to utter ignorance in the most important respect: we cannot have any knowledge regarding the ultimate principles of our choices, i.e. regarding their soundness or unsoundness... We are then in the position of beings who are sane and sober when engaged in trivial business and who gamble like madmen when confronted with serious issues.

What you always do before you make a decision is consult. The best public policy is made when you are listening to people who are going to be impacted. Then, once a policy is determined, you call on them to help you sell it.

Nations, not less than individuals, reap as they sow. The dreadful calamities of the past few years came not by accident, nor unbidden, from the ground. You shudder to-day at the harvest of blood sown in the spring-time of the Republic by your patriot fathers. The principle of slavery, which they tolerated under the erroneous impression that it would soon die out, became at last the dominant principle and power at the South. It early mastered the Constitution, became superior to the Union, and enthroned itself above the law.

Thoughts convince thinkers; for this reason, thoughts convince seldom.

The proof of a theory is in its reasoning, not in its sponsorship. The proof of a theory is in its reasoning, not in its sponsorship.

To make mankind just and happy and creative and harmonious forever—what would be too high a price to pay for that? To make such an omelette, there is surely no limit to the number of eggs that should be broken—that was the faith of Lenin, of Trotsky, of Mao… of Pol Pot…. You declare that a given policy will make you happier, or freer or give you room to breathe: but I know you are mistaken. I know what you need, what all men need; and if there is resistance based on ignorance or malevolence, then it must be broken and hundreds of thousands may have to perish to make millions happy for all time.

The relationship between the policy desires of the wealthiest 10 percent of the population and the actual Federal public policy over recent decades often corresponded to a plutocracy rather than a democracy.

Changing course implies an admission that the previous course was incorrect, and no administration likes to do that.

The civil servant, the general or admiral, the foreign service officer has no authority to make policy. The act only as servants to the government and therefore they must remain in line with the government policy that is established by those that have been elected by the people to set that policy.

Personnel is policy.

The cure can be worse than the illness

… policy has shaped intelligence more than vice versa.

My thinking is dominated by the future of Israel and the Jewish people wherever they are—in 30 years or 300 years.

We must be patient if we would act wisely. What we do today may bear fruit long after we are dead, for no good work is ever really lost. The important thing is to get the tendency right. We should think of all these subjects in terms not of brief individual life, but long continued national life.