Thomas Menino Quotes

One cannot legislate problems out of existence. It has been tried.

I would say that Barack Obama has always been a real optimist about what can be accomplished. He believes that government can be used to create systemic, long-term, real change. And the first lady is more of a skeptic.

The change we seek for our nation is not the choice of an individual but must be the calling of a country.

Two thirds of a century ago, we were given a national policy. It was made to fit the conditions of the day.

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

A very great percentage of our people see only from $200 to $600 cash in hand during the course of a year, and many, many others have incomes under $1000 or ranging from $1000 to $2000 a year. This problem involves so many people that we cannot just say "Let the government solve it." We, as a people, must solve it by deciding on the type of social and economic philosophy which we wish to see established in this country. When we know what changes we want, we can then set government machinery to work to accomplish them, but the people themselves must know what it is they wish to do.

Asking the government to fix our economy is like asking an editor to fix a movie, but in this case, the editor's not even of one mind.

Sometimes it requires national impetus to deliver real change.

Some people seem to believe that for each problem there is a solution readily available - a solution that can be promptly achieved by passing a law and voting some money. I think of this as the vending machine concept of social change. Put a coin in the machine and out comes a piece of candy. If there is a social problem, pass a law and out comes a solution.

I'm not going to waste my time trying 'break' America, you know what I mean? Too many people have died trying to break America. America doesn't break unless it wants to.

You can’t fix the things that bother you the most by passing a law.

The left’s reflex is that if something is good then the government ought to provide it, and some conservatives are falling into the left’s political trap.

I do not believe that the Great Society is the ordered, changeless, and sterile battalion of ants.

The big policy wins of the New Deal were actually offered as compromises. Because the alternative seemed to be revolution.

I am hopeful about our future and sure that, despite our challenges, engaging our government remains essential in the journey toward perfecting our union.

I want a real revolution, a real change in society: society, a great organic mass of well-regulated forces used for the bringing-about a happy life for all.

I feel like a serious revolution needs to take place in order for human beings to evolve in a way where we can truly exist as a society.

When markets fail, as they often do, collective action becomes imperative.

One of the things that will decline over time is the demand that the society or the government bring forth a particularized racial remedy based on a history of deprivation. That will be even more difficult to do in the future.

Roosevelt's New Deal regulated business, protected social welfare and promoted national infrastructure on the principle that the role of government was not simply to protect the property of the wealthy, but rather was to promote equality of opportunity for all.

It's very important that the government is close to the business community and that we understand their concerns. But at some point, the government needs to be a government.

I came up in a time where the assumption was, in the '60s and '70s, where the federal government was a great agent of progressive social change, it was the intervener in the best sense, and it would come and address injustice forthrightly.

Government requires bringing people together and genuinely hearing their issues. It requires the establishment and strengthening of community.

In the language of politics, there is only one translation for the phrase 'hope and change,' to wit: 'big, fat government.'

Despite the never-ending debate on the question of the role of government in America, there's been a strong tradition of protecting our undisputed, important natural treasures or taking on great common engineering challenges.