David Korten Quotes

I think that people are tired. They're tired of the same old kind of politics. People want a new tone to politics.

The greatest problem in Japanese politics over the last two decades is that we put off what needed to be done. We have to overcome that.

People are fed up with the career politicians who created this mess or failed to prevent it and neither was acceptable, and the only way we could change that was by sending a different type of person to Washington.

Voters seem to understand what a big waste of time trying to change Washington is.

The conservative movement was told to curl up in a fetal position and just stay there for the next eight years, thank you very much. Well, how things have changed.

Just by making a decision to stay out of politics, you are making the decision to allow others to shape politics and exert power over you. And if you are alienated from the current political system, then just by staying out of it, if you do nothing to change it, you simply entrench it.

In the democracy we live in today, it takes crisis to get the politics moving.

I had this perception based on my own frustrations with Washington, but I didn't realize until I launched this campaign how much people are looking for a new generation of leadership and a new approach in Washington.

As constituents, we've become lazy in terms of what we want and how to get it. If we, as a constituency, don't like what Congress is doing, but 90 percent of incumbents get reelected every year, that's a problem.

We need to continuously put pressure on politicians to do more, because they are happy just to do nothing—it’s easier to do nothing.

What is true is that if we do not change the culture of Washington, D.C., the United States of America will cease.

I ran for president in order to be able to try to change Washington D.C. from the inside. Our federal government is broken.

The abjection of our political situation is the only true challenge today. Only facing up to this situation in all its desperation can help us get out of it.

Developing compassion for Congress and politicians is a good way to begin practicing the new social activism if you want to make effective changes in the world. Perhaps the most startling new insight of all is that there is no other way to effectively change the world.

I think that politics needs a bit of spicing up.

I've got three little kids at home, and I'm trying to save this country from itself. I'm not here to play political power games, and I've had enough of people playing political power games, and this has just gone on too long.

Now, a lot of people have given up on government. And if you're one of those people, I would ask that you reconsider, because things are changing. Politics is not changing; government is changing.

Of course things get stagnant; people get too used to their environment, but that's why I'm in my district every week, at meetings with my constituents.

You don't choose a party because it's the flavour of the month. I feel I will be able to work under a political system. I feel if people like me don't enter politics to bring change, who will?

Many people leave government disillusioned about its ability to achieve change and cynical about politicians. I left with rather opposite lessons.

We need new energy back in Washington.

You cannot make progress in a political vacuum.

Many of you are disillusioned with the performance of this and past governments, and with the unkept promises. But we have to understand that we cannot manage without these reforms.

The two old parties … fight only for office. Observe how utterly both parties in this respect lack program and new leadership.

To reform Congress, you have to get Congress to play along.