Amber Rudd Quotes

I don't want to come to Washington to be just another vote. I want to lead on issues that are important.

As governor, I learned the importance of having an agenda.

You can't consider a president weak because he will have a Congress that Mexican voters have wanted to be co-responsible in the decisions to be taken... It will be through the leadership that I will exercise that we will be able to build the agreements in Congress.

Governing is hard. If you’re in the majority, you’ve got to do the hard work of governing

Government is about hard choices.

Good political leadership for me involves getting the big decisions right - however difficult, however controversial, however potentially divisive and then being able to take people with you.

We've got to trust the politicians with these decisions.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

I had hoped to hear the President tonight tell the Congress and the American people exactly how he plans to tackle some of the important issues facing this country, unfortunately I did not.

There's nothing to be said for opposition. You can only talk about things and you can lay your plans. You can't actually achieve very much; you have to be in government for that.

Forget the consultants, the pundits and the pollsters; good policy is good politics.

When you see how the President makes political or policy decisions, you see who he is. The essence of the Presidency is decision-making.

There is no school that teaches you how to run a state. You make mistakes, but you learn on the job.

If you are a U. S. senator, you can give an ideological response to a serious problem and probably never be held accountable for it. Whereas the [state] governors are dealing with the real world—they have to run things, to make them work.

The statesman wishes to steer, while the politician is satisfied to drift.

The distinction between a statesman and a politician is that the former imposes his will and his ideas on his environment while the latter adopts himself to it.

The presidency is not about easy choices.

The president is the only one we have to make decisions. We have no one else.

To govern is to chose.

There is something wrong with the way in which we make our decisions. The Government listen too much to the pollsters and the party managers. The trouble is that they are not even very good at politics, and they are entering too much into policy decisions. As a result, there is too much short-termism, too much reacting to events, and not enough shaping of events. We give the impression of being in office but not in power. Far too many important decisions are made for 36 hours' publicity.

The President must stay in office to steer these changes through.

There are two kinds of horses; there are show horses, and there are work horses, and you've got to decide in the United States Senate whether you want to be a show horse or a work horse.

The job of government is to govern. They ought to get on with it.

People tend to leave foreign affairs to governments because they think the leaders of government have all the information and know better.

Governing is about selecting.