Policy Quotes - Page 14

• In a troubled state we must do as in foul weather upon a river, not think to cut directly through, for the boat may be filled with water; but rise and fall as the waves do, and give way as much as we conveniently can.

  John Selden

  Fall, Cutting, Thinking

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• people, in forming their opinions of others, are usually lazy enough to go by whatever is most obvious or whatever chance remark they happen to hear. So the best policy is to dictate to others the opinion you want them to have of you.

  Judith Martin

  People, Lazy, Want

  Judith Martin (1986). “Style and substance: a comedy of manners”, Scribner

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• Refined policy ever has been the parent of confusion, and ever will be so as long as the world endures. Plain good intention, which is as easily discovered at the first view as fraud is surely detected at last, is of no mean force in the government of mankind.

  Edmund Burke

  Mean, Views, Government

  Edmund Burke, James BURKE (Barrister-at-Law.) (1854). “The Speeches of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, with Memoir and Historical Introductions. By James Burke”, p.75

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• 'Murphys law of economic policy': Economists have the least influence on policy where they know the most and are most agreed; they have the most influence on policy where they know the least and disagree most vehemently.

  Alan Blinder

  Law, Influence, Economics

  "New ball game, same old team" by Faisal Islam, www.theguardian.com. March 6, 2004.

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• Personal abuse is no substitute for policy. It signals panic.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Abuse, Criticism, Panic

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• As a Liberal of course I am very strongly committed to the notion of artistic freedom and very hostile to the idea of there being a single view of cultural policy dictated from on high.

  George Brandis

  Views, Ideas, Artistic

  Source: www.abc.net.au

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• The tyranny of distance is such an important element of policy and the allocation of resources.

  George Brandis

  Distance, Important, Elements

  Source: www.abc.net.au

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• I'm all for experimenting with sortition - randomly selected representative bodies of citizens. But I don't favor direct democracy. We're busy. We have lives. There is reddit. Who has time to work out the right answer to the thousand policy choices a gov't must make all the time?

  Lawrence Lessig

  Work Out, Choices, Democracy

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• Unfortunately, there's a lot of people in high places who understand the science but don't like where the policy leads them: too much government control.

  David Titley

  Government, People, Too Much

  "'Climate Change War' Is Not a Metaphor". Interview with Eric Holthaus, www.slate.com. April 18, 2014.

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• The policy of adapting one's self to circumstances makes all ways smooth.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Self, Way, Smooth

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• Modesty is policy, no less than virtue.

  William Gilmore Simms

  Modesty, Virtue

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• Policy and politics generally go contrary to principle.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Principles, Politics, Contrary

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• We can't expect to solve problems if all we do is tear each other down. You can disagree with a certain policy without demonizing the person who espouses it.

  Barack Obama

  Tears, Problem, Certain

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• Policy is formed by preconceptions, by long implanted biases. When information is relayed to policy-makers, they respond in terms of what is already inside their heads and consequently make policy less to fit the facts than to fit the notions and intentions formed out of the mental baggage that has accumulated in their minds since childhood.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Government, Long, Childhood

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• To write about the monstrous sense of alienation the poet feels in this culture of polarized hatreds is a way of staying sane. With the poem, I reach out to an audience equally at odds with official policy, and I celebrate our mutual humanness in an inhuman world.

  Maxine Kumin

  Writing, Odds, Hatred

  Maxine Kumin (2000). “Always Beginning: Essays on a Life in Poetry”

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• International politics, by and large, are a depressing study.

  C. V. Wedgwood

  Depressing, Politics, Study

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• The sign of a good marriage is that everything is debatable and challenged; nothing is turned into law or policy. The rules, if any, are known only to the two players, who seek no public trophies.

  Carolyn Heilbrun

  Marriage, Player, Law

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• There is too great a tendency (perhaps encouraged by popular journalism) to deal with the dramatic moments, forgetting that these are not always the most significant moments. ... To find the significant rather than the dramatic features of industrial controversy, of a disagreement in regard to policy on board of directors or between managers, is essential to integrative business policies.

  Mary Parker Follett

  Business, Directors, Essentials

  Mary Parker Follett, Pauline Graham (1996). “Mary Parker Follett--prophet of management: a celebration of writings from the 1920s”, Harvard Business Press

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• The conservatives have already accepted a large part of the collectivist creed-a creed that has governed policy for so long that many of its institutions have come to be accepted as a matter of course and have become a source of pride to "conservative" parties who created them. Here the believer in freedom cannot but conflict with the conservative and take an essentially radical position, directed against popular prejudices, entrenched positions, and firmly established privileges. Follies and abuses are no better for having long been established principles of folly.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Party, Pride, Long

  "The Constitution of Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek, Postscript: Why I Am Not a Conservative, 1960.

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• Much was said and written, at the time, concerning the policy of adding the vast regions of Louisiana, to the already immense, and but half-tenanted territories of the United-States.

  James F. Cooper

  Book, United States, Louisiana

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• How easy it is for generous sentiments, high courtesy, and chivalrous courage to lose their influence beneath the chilling blight of selfishness, and to exhibit to the world a man who was great in all the minor attributes of character, but who was found wanting when it became necessary to prove how much principle is superior to policy.

  James F. Cooper

  Character, Men, Selfishness

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• A respect for the rights of other peoples to determine their forms of government and their economy will not weaken our democracy. It will inevitably strengthen it.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  Government, Rights, Democracy

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• The greatest threats to North Dakota are policies coming out of Washington, D.C. I see it every day and feel a sense of responsibility to do something about it.

  Kevin Cramer

  Responsibility, North Dakota, Coming Out

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• The American public has difficulty believing ... [that] injustice continues to be inflicted upon Indian people because Americans assume that the sympathy and tolerance they feel toward Indians is somehow 'felt' or transferred to the government policy that deals with Indians. This is not the case.

  Leslie Marmon Silko

  Believe, Government, People

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• The potential gains from improved stabilization policies are on the order of hundredths of a percent of consumption, perhaps two orders of magnitude smaller than the potential benefits of available supply-side fiscal reforms.

  Robert Lucas, Jr.

  Order, Two, Reform

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