Capitalism is not a perfect system. It may be better than all the other systems, but it's not a perfect system.
Give me a bad democracy, a sick democracy, but democracy!
Our world is not an optimal place, fine tuned by omnipotent forces of selection. It is a quirky mass of imperfections, working well enough (often admirably); a jury-rigged set of adaptations built of curious parts made available by past histories in different contexts. A world optimally adapted to current environments is a world without history, and a world without history might have been created as we find it. History matters; it confounds perfection and proves that current life transformed its own past.
Freedom has many flaws and our democracy is imperfect, but we have never had to put up a wall to keep our people in.
Referring to the Berlin Wall:
There is no such thing as a good government. There never was. There can't be.
Well, so be it. Nothing's perfect in life, so you have an election that's not quite perfect. Is it better than not having an election? You bet.
Public policy is a study in imperfection. It involves imperfect people, with imperfect information, facing deeply imperfect choices - so it's not surprising that they're getting imperfect results.
Creativity is enhanced by less-than-perfect control over what content is on the network.
To travel is to discover that everybody is wrong. The philosophies, the civilizations which seem, at a distance, so superior to those current at home, all prove on a close inspection to be in their own way just as hopelessly imperfect.
Am I embarrassed to speak for a less than perfect democracy? Not one bit. Find me a better one. Do I suppose there are societies which are free of sin? No, I don't. Do I think ours is, on balance, incomparably the most hopeful set of human relations the world has? Yes, I do.
It has been said that all Government is an evil. It would be more proper to say that the necessity of any Government is a misfortune. This necessity however exists; and the problem to be solved is, not what form of Government is perfect, but which of the forms is least imperfect.
We are all imperfect. We cannot expect perfect government.
I think it is asking a lot for regulators to be perfect - because they won't be.
We need to learn to work with political systems that are not perfect instead of taking the view: let's first fix the politics, then we'll fix the rest.
There's never going to be a system that is fair to everyone.
The idea of sustainability can imply there is one perfect, unchanging future, if only we could work out how to get there. Resilience might be more useful, in that it assumes a dynamic environment and that perfection is impossible. You need to design systems to accommodate failure rather than eliminate it. By trying to be perfect, many visions of sustainability are quite brittle
All human belief systems are inherently flawed.
The problem to be solved is, not what form of government is perfect, but which of the forms is least imperfect.
Every form of government has its advantages and inconveniences inseparable from it. It would be in vain to seek for a government absolutely perfect; and however perfect it might appear in speculation, yet it is certain, that in practice, and under the administration of men, it will ever be attended with some particular defects.
It's all very well to put the government in the hands of the perfect man, but what do you do when the perfect man gets a bellyache?
I don't think there is such a thing as the perfect system.
I've seen plenty of films where the projector broke. The problems that we have in the digital age are exactly the same as we had. Instead of, 'There's a hair in the gate,' it's, 'The computer ate the footage.' There will always be things like that going on. Nothing is perfect.
I've said many times around the world that like any government, like any country, like, any set of human institutions, we have our flaws. We've operated imperfectly. There are times we've made mistakes.
Markets are imperfect. So you do need regulation, knowing that the regulators are also human.
Elections are rarely perfect.
