Political Inertia Quotes

The founders designed a government in which it was easier to do nothing than it was to do a great deal all at once.

Washington’s largest industry is inertia.

Politics is a like physics. Whatever goes up has to come down a little bit.

As constituents, we've become lazy in terms of what we want and how to get it. If we, as a constituency, don't like what Congress is doing, but 90 percent of incumbents get reelected every year, that's a problem.

Hillary Clinton complains that Donald Trump took advantage of the tax code. Well, why didn't she change it? Why didn't you change it when you were a senator? The reason you didn't is that all your friends take the same advantage that I do.

The government's like a mule, it's slow and it's sure; it's slow to turn, and it's sure to turn the way you don't want it.

The question nowadays is not what makes government work. The question is how do we make it stop.

In typical Washington fashion, nothing gets reformed until a disaster happens.

To get Congress to do anything.

Getting the U. S. Government to do anything is like herding ducks with a broom.

The Senate is extremely slow: They have enormous difficulty passing the bills that even get through the House. That's the reality that I've recognized in my two years: that it takes time to change the world.

Government is the political representative of a natural equilibrium, of custom, of inertia; it is by no means a representative of reason.

Only people who look dull ever get into the House of Commons, and only people who are dull ever succeed there.

Inertia is as powerful a force in society and politics as it is on physics, and effecting change can be demanding and discouraging.

The instinct of the Labour Party is if there's a problem, change the leader, then sit back, fold your arms and wait to be disappointed because they're sure it's not going to deliver.

Never blame a legislative body for not doing something. When they do nothing, that don't hurt anybody. When they do something is when they become dangerous.

Congress never loses its capacity to disappoint you.

How many times have we seen politicians in office become cut off from the outside world and become unaware that the world has moved on?

I still believe we wasted a golden opportunity to make significant changes in our country. I think people in America would have been ready and willing to do it, but the Bush administration took a kind of simplistic, almost moronic approach to it, all because people were so afraid.

After so many years now, it's just suspected by most people that there simply is no way to change the direction Washington's going or the country's going or to do anything about that small group of establishment elitists in both parties that end up running things for themselves.

We do not live in a revolutionary time. People are not prepared to contest power.

These 10 steps, if rigorously followed and enforced, will accomplish more in a matter of months than our politicians have accomplished on this issue in the last 50 years. It's going to happen.

It was truly an astonishing grassroots explosion, ... The objective was to get a nationwide demonstration of concern for the environment so large that it would shake the political establishment out of its lethargy.

How stagnant and tepid the whole British political scene is now is just beyond belief.

So, Japan as a country has lost its vigor; it feels very much closed in for various reasons.