Laura Ingraham Quotes

The wise policymaker doesn't assume that any policy adopted in good faith will have good results. Instead, he or she weighs the likely outcome of any new policy based on facts and experience - not sentiments and dreams.

Congress must not do something just for the sake of doing something. We must carefully and thoughtfully consider the implications of any action and whether that action will help or hinder our ultimate mission of protecting U.S. citizens from terror.

I have to take decisions—not back hunches.

Good policy analysis recognizes that physical truth may be poorly or incompletely known. Its objective is to evaluate, order, and structure incomplete knowledge so as to allow decisions to be made with as complete an understanding as possible of the current state of knowledge, its limitations, and its implications.

As an intelligence analyst you have to tell the president what you know, what you think you know and what you don’t know.

Every good businessman or woman carefully analyzes all the available facts before making a decision.

I can't ever remember being struck by lightning when making a big decision. It's always about taking in more and more data points and making tack adjustments as you figure it out. I call customers, suppliers, industry analysts and try to get as much information as possible.

It's a question of evidence-based politics. If you know that something does not work, you should not keep doing it.

I will never speculate on data. I always need to see data.

Here's the teaching point, if you're teaching kids about intelligence and policy: Intelligence does not absolve policymakers of responsibility to ask tough questions, and it doesn't absolve them of having curiosity about the consequences of their actions.

All policy is a matter of gains and losses, upsides and downsides.

I'm a bit of a freak for evidence-based analysis. I strongly believe in data.

I don't have a particular recommendation other than that we base decisions on as much hard data as possible. We need to carefully look at all the options and all their ramifications in making our decisions.

Wishful thinking is not sound public policy.

My job is to provide the president with the richest possible consideration, so that he knows what is at stake in whatever decision he makes.

You can’t have opinions unless you have information.

You don’t make changes until you see a positive advantage for change.

Armchair generals assume that nations decide on their foreign policy objectives and then subordinate everything else to achieving them. Life is more complicated. Threats, opportunities and risks are always uncertain, but the economic costs of maximum preparedness are definite.

The great problem now is that we don’t know what to do.

Careful economic analysis does have one important benefit, which is that it can help kill ideas that are completely logically inconsistent or wildly at variance with the data. This insight covers at least 90 percent of proposed economic policies

I warn you not to accept military advice too easily.

Barak Obama is a chess player in a town full of checkers players.

I believe on the issue of immigration, you have to deal with it sensibly.

We want to do this methodically, smart, starting with border security then looking at immigration reform measures.

I try to look at problems very clearly and think, 'How do we get out of this? What will work? What will be the consequences for the people involved?'