Keith Ellison Quotes

If you can't explain your vote in 30 seconds, its the wrong vote.

A Prince who will not undergo the Difficulty of Understanding, must undergo the Danger of Trusting.

I want to be an independent and responsible voice for Arizonans, and it would be unwise to endorse a specific approach before the costs and benefits of these options can be evaluated.

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.

To say that I'm going to veto something that I haven't read is just - or sign something that I haven't read - I don't think is good policy for any chief executive.

I think my reaction to most issues is to get the facts and circumstances.

Before I take an offer seriously, I do my own research.

That is what a good manager does - you study and think and discuss, and you come up with a model of playing.

In a mature democracy any proposed policy should be subjected to a close analysis of its likely benefits and costs.

Typically, members of Congress don't just hear a story about a program and indicate whether they support it or not.

There's a lot of new subject matter to learn. You start slowly peeling the onion and start figuring out how the policy and the politics intersect.

Always make the choice to learn. What Princeton taught me was whatever mess you are studying, pull a thread with great persistence 'til you have clarity of thought. Princeton taught me how to solve a problem. How to think - that's what we pull out of this place.

My experience in decision-making has shown that patterns are tough to break. In the military, we study an opponent, looking for gaps, flaws, or weaknesses that can be exploited. Successful leaders at all levels in all disciplines conduct this kind of analysis.

I'm not going to speculate about legislation that I haven't seen before.

There's got to be a point in time where the reality comes home and people realize, here are the facts, and this is either not true or it is true. You've got the facts, you can make your own decision now.

You have to make your decision based on the content.

If you're informed, you make an informed choice. You understand the quality of certain things and you understand the history of certain things.

But why allow someone to make a bad choice when a little information might engender a better one? It's hard to wake up and see the sun if the blinds are pulled.

I don't guess. I think. I ponder. I deduce. Then I decide. But I never guess.

Action without study fatal. Study without action is futile.

The purpose of education is to make the choices clear to people, not to make the choices for people.

What is to be once resolved on should be first often well considered.

Even if you reject everything, it is always better to know what it is you are rejecting.

Whenever I think about an issue, I always argue the opposite side of it. So, when I ultimately decide on a course of action, I've already been through all the conceivable scenarios, and I'm going to go for it.

The wise form right judgment of the present from what is past.