William H. Seward Quotes

I'm an implementer of policy, not a maker of policy.

Bad administration, to be sure, can destroy good policy, but good administration can never save bad policy.

A policy is a temporary creed liable to be changed, but while it holds good it has got to be pursued with apostolic zeal.

I'm tired of high policy talks. I want to focus on nuts and bolts.

We hope that there will be better policy-making and hope to see projects implemented. We have lots of information that can be used for the implementation of projects.

Our experience with ad hoc wartime and post-hostilities agencies operating in the foreign field has demonstrated that not only are new agencies of little value in executing policies which go beyond the vision and the educational horizon of their own personnel, but that they actually develop a momentum of their own which, in the final analysis, tends to shape—rather than to serve—the national policy.

Whatever policy we adopt, there must be an energetic prosecution of it.

What matters is not a simple sense of an issue’s salience, but whether a government can shape outcomes on it, where there is the greatest likelihood that the parties will actually be able to implement their policies.

The policies and the laws are no better than the people who are enforcing them.

Better a hundred times an honest and capable administration of an erroneous policy than a corrupt and incapable administration of a good one.

Personnel is policy.

It is not the intelligence community's place to set and implement policy.

Radical socio-economic transformation is a policy of the ANC. As a leader of the ANC, you have to implement the policy. When I talk about radical socio-economic transformation, it's not my thing; it's an ANC policy.

Whatever your purpose is that leads you to the point of no return, that's where you go.

White House staff are meant to coordinate and set policy, not carry it out.

Ultimately, any government is one which enjoys the majority of support of members of Parliament to carry out a policy.

I remember when we came in, in 2013, and I was implementing our border protection policy, people threw their hands up - and I said, 'I'm doing what I said I would do in the way I said I'd do it' - and guess what: I'm now getting the results I said I'd get.

We have all the good policies, all right visions, but the problem is implementation. When we come out of national conference, we want those leaders we have chosen to be those who can implement policies.

There is an apparatus set up to protect politicians, but those within that apparatus will have their own political views. I've got mates who are police officers and mates who are in the military, and they often have a very different view to the policy they're asked to carry out.

I think the fact that we have been focussing on politics quite a lot and the tumult of politics rather than what we should be doing in terms of policy has made, I think, voters quite grumpy.

It's far from clear in general that Donald Trump is a guy who really thinks about the details of policy and is going to do the kind of heavy lifting you have to do as president to get those policies through in Congress. I think the hope is that Paul Ryan and his crew will push policies through Congress and Trump will just sign them. That's not really how policy works.

Technology has an incredible role to play in enabling of policy issues.

IAR is policy, always has been.

I mean, you can't be less ruthless than the opposition simply because your government's policy is benevolent, can you now?

I don't think we do a great job in America any more of distinguishing between campaigns and governance. We live in an environment that's all campaign all of the time and it's helpful, now that we've moved beyond a campaign and an election to get into a governance posture.