David Deutsch Quotes

I think I can regard myself as a political decision-maker.

The fact that we see some people doing what appears to be good civic-minded deeds may be because that is their true intention, and it may be that that is their best way to hold onto power in a setting where they have to depend on a lot of people.

We think that it is the best scientists working in the frontier fields of science who are best able to judge what is good and what is bad - if any - in the application of their scientific research.

I am not content to entrust our free-speech rights to the good graces and whims of Congress and hope that politicians don't abuse their power.

Europe’s slow political decline has been disguised for decades by American power.

The theory of politics that emerges from the political literature of the pre-Revolutionary years rests on the belief that what lay behind every political scene, the ultimate explanation of every political controversy, was the disposition of power

To be frank, politics is about wanting power, getting it, exercising it, and keeping it.

GDP has effectively become a proxy for national success or failure. It has the power to decide elections, overthrow governments, and launch popular movements.

In holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite.

The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all.

You cannot move a piece of [energy] legislation through Congress in the year 2013 unless the American Petroleum Institute proposes it. You cannot move legislation without their consent. They are a de facto fourth branch of government.

They are one of the most profitable industries in the world, and they’re throwing money into Washington DC. They’re buying politicians.

There are three things that are important in politics today: money, money and money.

America is less democratic than it might be because the preferences of the ultra wealthy often outweigh the preferences of everyone else.

We should all be troubled when science is treated as if it were an ideology rather than a discipline.

When most people find themselves running afoul of the law, they might change their ways. When the Koch brothers found themselves running afoul of the law, David Koch decided to run for office so that he could change the law.

I've been really at the highest levels of American political life.

It's incredibly flattering to be a U.S. senator, which I want to stay at for a long time.

Women have learned to flex their political muscles. You got to flex that muscle to get what you want.

We all want prosperity, but not at the expense of liberty. Poverty is not as great a danger to liberty as is wealth, with its corrupting, demoralizing influences. Let us never have a Government at Washington owing its retention to the power of the millionaires rather than to the will of millions.

Presidents have to decide what their popularity is for. Lyndon Johnson probably understood best that political popularity is a wasting asset. You had to use it when you had it.

Washington is built on power.

I have a bigger voice than Donald Trump, you know what I'm saying? Than literally anybody that works in politics.

'The Means' is about power. I have access to political insiders who helped me write a portrait of the real day-to-day in politics, which turned out to be crazier than Wall Street.

Look, politics can be tough.