Richard Lamm Quotes

Having a scapegoat means not knowing that we have one.

Too often, when people are in trouble they look for scapegoats.

Men's common guise is always to lay the burden on some other back.

I'm really not tailored for responsibility.

Unintelligent people always look for a scapegoat.

The perfect bureaucrat … is the man who manages to make no decisions and escape all responsibility.

To pay the price of federal mandates, local governments must cut the services that they are in the business of providing ... To Congress we say, if you're going to pass the bill, don't pass us the buck.

A wrongdoer is often a man who has left something undone, not always one who has done something.

When the federal government promises no new taxes, they're promising no new federal taxes.

Don't try to shift your responsibilities on to somebody else.

When they talk about belt-tightening in Washington, they are talking about tightening our belts.

You can duck responsibility within your committee; you can blame somebody else's committee, you can disappear behind the facade of your party allegiance ..., or you can blame it on the other House; and if none of those happens to ... work, you can dump it on the shoulders of bureaucracy and red tape ...

Governors would like the money to be left on a stump and let them come and pick it up and spend it where they want. Governors like to spread money around rather than target it.

When Federal money goes to the States for the cities, it never gets there.

The [teachers’] unions and the [school] districts have very different stakes in local control. The districts want the money and the programs that higher level governments can provide, but they also want autonomy in determining how resources are allocated. The unions are much less wedded to local autonomy. Indeed, much of their lobbying at the state level is to limit the autonomy of the districts.

People will throw stones and hide their hands and then get back and play victim.

We will remember UPA 2, if at all, it seems, as that period when things went mysteriously wrong - for the bribe-taking, buck-passing, foot-dragging, and general sense of paralysis.

I find it very frustrating how much passing the buck there is in the criminal justice system when it comes to taking responsibility for outcomes.

Everybody is looking for a reason to not to take responsibility for their own actions in hand.

Modern politics has become little more than shirking responsibility and blaming somebody else.

When you have an opportunity to take the lead and you don't, most of the time something bad happens.

I did nothing. The Word did it all.

Never learn to do anything: if you don't learn, you'll always find someone else to do it for you.

For many people, an excuse is better than an achievement because an achievement, no matter how great, leaves you having to prove yourself again in the future; but an excuse can last for life.

I hate it when people blame someone else and don't take responsibility.