Mark Walport Quotes

How can we decide matters of public policy when we cannot understand them?

Science, engineering, and technology discovers and invents new ways of doing things - but it doesn't dictate how we should do them.

At the end of the day, if there are truly ethical considerations, those have to override scientific considerations.

You have to spend your political capital on great causes for your country.

By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.

No decisions should ever be made without asking the question, is this for the common good?

The only realistic view is that a human life arises gradually, which is not much help in making personal decisions or devising public policy.

Technological advances have brought our nation to a point where momentous public choices are inescapable.

We are now facing a problem more of ethics than of physics.

Because market forces and institutions are ethically indifferent, they require a deliberative, communal intelligence to prevent extreme injustice.

Our [politicians] responsibility is to be sure that we utilize the best science.

Whenever you involve scientists with politicians there is a struggle.

I tell Administration officials this is the science. This is the recommendation. What they do with it is beyond my control.

When a government faces an evil that might be avoided, the usual pattern is to first debate whether or not the evil is real or imagined; then determine how evil it really is; then is it an appropriate function of government to avoid it? Then what are the alternative ways to avoid it? Then what are the costs to avoid it? And finally, is the benefit of avoiding the evil worth the cost? In those cases where it is, it is by this time too late to avoid the evil and discussions shift to ameliorating the evil.

Whenever I had to make a difficult decision as a Congressman, I thoud think about the average citisen in my Congressional districr and how he would advise me if he knew everythign I knew about the issue.

I believe that politicians have a public trust to further debates about important issues. I firmly believe that every public debate holds the prospect of enlightenment.

Politics isn't that difficult; it is about finding your conscience again. So, just do what is right.

Government ought to make it easy for people to do the right thing.

People ask, 'Is the science going to run ahead of the ethics?' I don't think that's always the problem. I think it's that the science runs ahead of the politics. Bioethics can alert people to something coming down the road, but it doesn't mean policy and politicians are going to pay attention. They tend to respond when there's an immediate crisis. The job of the ethicist, in some ways, is to warn or be prophetic. You can yell loudly, but you can't necessarily get everybody to leave the cinema, so to speak.

Politics is about explanations.

Politicians can’t just point to problems. They need to propose solutions.

A politician must become a person again, someone who not only trusts scientific representation and analysis of the world, but also the world itself.

I wish twenty-four hours, a good night's sleep and a day spent in the open air could always elapse before any government officials take action on matters of grave importance.

Individual capitalists are in charge of a wide range of decisions which, because of their consequences for the general welfare of society, are in fact public policy decisions taken by private individuals.

A surprising number of government committees will make important decisions on fundamental matters with less attention than each individual would give to buying a suit.