Theda Skocpol Quotes

The Bush administration doesn't particularly like public participation. It makes them look bad.

We sometimes miss the inner working of government….most people wander around, make mistakes, and put on their pants just the way we do…. It’s not all this big conspiracy.

We don’t trust government, but we need government….Government didn’t land here from Mars. We elected them.

I suspect that a lot of the frustration people feel about government would feel a lot better if we had corporate influence out of our politics and were running a democracy like the founding fathers intended.

Some good souls found The Candidate cynical. I wonder what they'll think when they read this portrait of the real-life Jerry Brown... This is the book that could force the little fox into the open.

American democracy is the inalienable right to sit on your front porch, in your pyjamas, drinking a can of beer and shouting out 'Where else is this possible?' Which doesn't seem to me to be freedom, really.

It's a funny thing, I think people meet us and they assume that we know a lot more about politics than we actually do. People will really get into it. I'm like, I don't really know a lot about tariff reform or export trade reform. That's really not something I know about.

In public administration good sense would seem to require that public expectation be kept at the lowest possible level in order to minimize eventual disappointment.

I was invited to give the Freshmen Convocation at Florida Gulf Coast University on October 24, 2004. My book The Open Space of Democracy had been selected as one of the "common readers" for the university's 1,050 entering freshmen. On October 6, William Merwin, the president of Florida Gulf Coast, made the decision to "postpone" the convocation. He cited negative statements I had made in print about President Bush. If our colleges and universities are no longer the champions and protectors of free speech, then no voice in this country is safe.

Your image as a model is your currency. That's the only thing you've got. No one cares what you look like in real life. Nobody is going to say the make up guy was terrible. They will say, you look awful and let's not book her again.

Academic education is the act of memorizing things read in books, and things told by college professors who got their education mostly by memorizing things read in books.

Media scrutiny is a great trademark of the American political arena.

E-governance is the only way to move from good governance to proactive pro-people good governance (P2G2).

...all members of Congress should be required wear NASCAR uniforms. You know, the kind with the patches? That way we'd know who is sponsoring each of them. I think he was kidding; they'd never be able to do it but it's a great idea and would wake people up in this country.

Even on the cable network MSNBC, some of the strongest proponents of [Barack] Obama are now beginning to question, if I may use their words, their "deity."

I couldn't imagine someone playing me or writing a book about who I am. Although I let people write articles and try and express who I am, and it blows up wildly in my face.

Remember the first debate between [Mitt] Romney and [Barack] Obama? Let's revisit it for a second. It's interesting to note the way the Drive-Bys played it. The first Romney-Obama debate, there was real concern after that debate that Obama didn't show up.

To read the papers and to listen to the news... one would think the country is in terrible trouble. You do not get that impression when you travel the back roads and the small towns do care about their country and wish it well.

People see me as pretty low key in a lot of ways. And for me, like, even choosing to be John Legend and to be who I am as a star, as an artist, it's a risk 'cause I - you know, I graduated from college and worked as a management consultant, and I could have had this very kind of buttoned-up life and worn suits to work every day.

Government provided free tuition tends more and more to produce a uniform conformist education, with college faculties ultimately dependent for their jobs on the government, and so developing an economic interest in profession and teaching a statist, pro-government, and socialist ideology.

We have weakened the parties and strengthened all the special interests.

I feel that Julian Assange came to be both paranoid and self-regarding in ways that ultimately undermined his own mission.

No President should fear public scrutiny of his program. For from that scrutiny comes understanding; and from that understanding comes support or opposition and both are necessary. I am not asking your newspapers to support the Administration, but I am asking your help in the tremendous task of informing and alerting the American people. For I have complete confidence in the response and dedication of our citizens whenever they are fully informed.

It's very hard from a distance to figure out who has lost their minds. One party, the other party, all of us, the president.

Many years ago, in the late '70s, I toured colleges along the East Coast and I presented a kind of show where I got a lot of books and poetry and pieces of [William] Shakespeare and other writers that I admire, read it to the class and then afterward we would talk and I would answer questions. It was really a way of expressing and finding out about where I was at that particular time, so it was very therapeutic for me.