Richard E. Neustadt Quotes

The challenge has been, we make policy in the world of politics.

Speaker Newt Gingrich has appointed a task force, which I'm on, and over the next couple months the task force is going to try to come up with legislation that does what we're all trying to do. I feel pretty good about the members that are on the task force.

Politics doesn't matter, policy does.

Nothing happens in any legislative body that's not purposeful.

What matters is not a simple sense of an issue’s salience, but whether a government can shape outcomes on it, where there is the greatest likelihood that the parties will actually be able to implement their policies.

All policy is targeted in one way or another.

Congress, after years of stalling, finally got around to clearing the way for informal discussions that might lead to possible formal talks that could potentially produce some kind of tenative agreements.

My strong preference has always been to legislate when I can get legislation done.

I'd like to think I'm a serious legislator and trying to get things done.

We live in a stage of politics, where legislators seem to regard the passage of laws as much more important than the results of their enforcement.

When we visited with legislative counsel, they told us that the only way to effectively accomplish what we were trying to do was to put the words in the legislation.

Indian president does not determine policy. Here President is not the policy maker. In the name of the president, the cabinet takes the policy decision.

Public policy has been a passion of mine. For three decades, I've had some involvement in the political process.

Johnson showed me how important it was to use every hour of every day to shape national policy while we had the power to do so.

The dominant color of politics is gray; difficult choices and compromise are required at almost every step of the journey toward a major new program.

In Sacramento you simply had to think about what the law ought to be and leave it to someone else to implement. In San Francisco, you hear about it the next day.

Nearly all legislation is the result of compromise.

It's harder to pass a law than stop one.

Regulations are a form of legislation and should be decided by a political process, not more or better benefit-cost analyses.

The work of a Russian parliamentarian is very much like the work of an American congressman. It's mainly affecting the policymaking of the government

We have no strategy. It is the government that sets the strategy. All we can do it try and figure out what the government will do.

Governing is about selecting.

When you pass legislation, it is not tied to a particular problem. It can have unintended consequences.

If I could solve these problems with passing laws in the Congress, I would do so.

If you talk to a lot of people in government, they will talk about the pathway to getting something done rather than the thing itself. And I just talk about material outcomes.