Policies Quotes

The Great Leap Forward

Our Presidents should not be able to conduct secret operations which violate our principles, jeopardize our rights, and have not been subject to the checks and balances which normally keep policies in line

Peace is not the absence of conflict. It is the ability to cope with conflict by peaceful means.

It’s not the man; it’s the plan.

The two old parties … fight only for office. Observe how utterly both parties in this respect lack program and new leadership.

In the anointed we find a whole class of supposedly “thinking people” who do remarkably little thinking about substance and a great deal of verbal expression. In order that this relatively small group of people can believe themselves wiser and nobler than the common herd, we have adopted policies which impose heavy costs on millions of other human beings, not only in taxes but also in lost jobs, social disintegration, and a loss of personal safety. Seldom have so few cost so much to so many.

Remember that all models are wrong; the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful.

More frightening than any particular beliefs or policies is an utter lack of any sense of a need to test those beliefs and policies against hard evidence. Mistakes can be corrected by those who pay attention to facts, but dogmatism will not be corrected by those who are wedded to a vision.

When, in a democratic society, policies don’t go their way, people tend to blame it on a small group of other people who they believe have more influence.

Actions can have unintended adverse consequences.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right — for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be "damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes.

You do have to keep in mind as you're going through extraordinarily difficult circumstances, that if you stay true, true to your values, if you stay true to your principles, if you believe in these values, then you can work in that context to right policies that may not be working.

Legislation is a matter of more or less intelligent improvisation aiming at palliating conditions by means of patchwork policies.

If we cannot keep secrets, it is impossible for our leaders to have the adequate information on which to base their policies.

To me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects.

What I learned from clerking for Judge Guido Calabresi and for Justice Steven Breyer was that there is no position, regardless of how wrong you think it is, that does not have some arguments in its favor, and you have to find them. And then, no matter how right your own position is, you must look for the weaknesses in that they are always there. You must be willing to find them and possibly change your approach or your mind on the subject.

My theme is going to be: Together we can win the future. The right policies lead to the right results. And I'm going to argue that President Obama will lose the future because the wrong policies lead to the wrong results.

If something is unsustainable and “cannot go on forever”, it tends to stop.

When you’re in the White House and are asked to defend a policy you do not agree with, you defend the policy.

We must be patient if we would act wisely. What we do today may bear fruit long after we are dead, for no good work is ever really lost. The important thing is to get the tendency right. We should think of all these subjects in terms not of brief individual life, but long continued national life.

Enlightened societies can only make good policy when that policy is based on the broadest possible information and on reasoned open discussion. Narrowness of views on a federal commission is not conducive to the nation getting the best possible advice.

I think that it's important to make criticisms of the government as a whole and criticisms of the policies, but to do so in a way that you can invite the individuals who maybe were on the opposition before, or who voted for somebody whom you are in disagreement with... that you open the door for a conversation with those people.

If by carelessness in controlling inflation and imposing controls on our general economy we are unable to meet these temporary but vital calls upon us, we will be courting real disaster.

There is no policy too sensitive to question, and no subject so taboo that you cannot even mention it