Policy Quotes - Page 24

• I'm not trying to be diplomatic. I'm trying to be more nuanced and realistic. I think there has to be a serious examination of the shortcomings of the Euro structure. Euro central institutions, whether it be fiscal policy, monetary policy, financial regulation, are simply not as robust as they are in a currency that has a national government behind it.

  Stephen Harper

  Thinking, Government, Trying

  Interview with Peter Mansbridge, www.theglobeandmail.com. June 5, 2012.

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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 great works belong to no one nation, no one cultural tradition even. They are universal.I want an Australian vision of arts policy that is expansive, is embracing, is not narrow, is not parochial. For example, that Australians can do Shakespeare just as well as Englishmen can because we, like every civilised nation, partake of the great canonical works. It's not about Australian nationalism; it's about our identity as a culturally ambitious, culturally sophisticated nation.

  George Brandis

  Art, Vision, Ambitious

  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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• Factions among yourselves; preferring such
  To offices and honors, as ne'er read
  The elements of saving policy;
  But deeply skilled in all the principles
  That usher to destruction.

  Philip Massinger

  Office, Honor, Principles

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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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• Organisation of social insurance should be treated as one part only of a comprehensive policy of social progress. Social insurance fully developed may provide income security; it is an attack upon Want. But Want is one only of five giants on the road of reconstruction and in some ways the easiest to attack. The others are Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness.

  William Beveridge

  Ignorance, Progress, Giants

  "Social Insurance and Allied Services". The "Beveridge Report" by William Beveridge (Part 1, 8), November 1942.

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• Policy and politics generally go contrary to principle.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Principles, Politics, Contrary

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• When two working people decide to marry, their federal income tax is usually increased. As soon as one spouse earns at least 20 percent of a married couple's total income, the couple pays a 'marriage tax.' ... The United States is the only major industrialized nation in the free world in which the tax cost of the second [married] earner's entry into the work force is higher than that of the first. On one hand, our government's social policy is to help working women earn equal salaries to those of men, but on the other we have a tax structure that penalizes them when they do so.

  Millicent Fenwick

  Couple, Men, Hands

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• A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Government, Pursuit, Periods

  Barbara Tuchman (2015). “The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam”, p.10, Crux Publishing Ltd

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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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• We may argue eloquently that 'Honesty is the best Policy' - unfortunately, the moment honesty is adopted for the sake of policy it mysteriously ceases to be honesty.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Honesty, May, Sake

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• We need to inject some old-fashioned American values and common-sense, practical thinking into our energy policy.

  Michael Bloomberg

  Thinking, Common Sense, Energy

  "Bloomberg Calls for National Energy Reforms" by Ray Rivera, www.nytimes.com. May 12, 2007.

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• I know that many Irish-born New Yorkers are caught in the trap of our federal immigration policies. If we are going to continue to attract the best and the brightest - and Ireland has more than its fair share - we need to inject some common sense into our immigration laws, and I'm doing my best to make that case in Washington.

  Michael Bloomberg

  Law, Common Sense, Immigration

  Michael Bloomberg's Speech At Breakfast Reception In Sligo, Ireland, www1.nyc.gov. August 22, 2006.

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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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• It is the curse of minorities in this power-worshipping world that either from fear or from an uncertain policy of expedience they distrust their own standards and hesitate to give voice to their deeper convictions, submitting supinely to estimates and characterizations of themselves as handed down by a not unprejudiced dominant majority.

  Anna Julia Cooper

  Voice, Giving, Majority

  Anna Julia Cooper (1988). “A Voice From the South”, p.43, Oxford University Press

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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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• we ought to realize by now (see Korea, see Vietnam, see Afghanistan, see Iraq, see Iran) that deploying the US military, or dealing billions of dollars a year of arms to our ally of the moment that can serve as a regional rival to our enemy of the moment, is not always the best way to make threats go away. Our military and weapons prowess is a fantastic and perfectly weighted hammer, but that doesn't make every international problem a nail.

  Rachel Maddow

  Military, Iran, Korea

  Rachel Maddow (2012). “Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power”, p.251, Broadway Books

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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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• A time comes when silence is betrayal. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought, within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Betrayal, War, Moving

  Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence, Delivered 4 April 1967, Riverside Church, New York City

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• Religion, which true policy befriends,
  Designed by God to serve man's noblest ends,
  Is by that old deceiver's subtle play
  Made the chief party in its own decay,
  And meets the eagle's destiny, whose breast
  Felt the same shaft which his own feathers drest.

  Katherine Philips

  Party, Destiny, Men

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• The Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group strongly supports green-line policies, because the only way to attract top level employees and their families is to protect the region's open space and environment. We want to build a community that is demonstrates smart growth rather than a model for L.A.-type growth.

  Carl Guardino

  Nature, Smart, Space

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• The very nature of economics is rooted in nationalism. ... It [was] developed ... in the hope of throwing light upon questions of policy. But policy means nothing unless there is an authority to carry it out, and authorities are national.

  Joan Robinson

  Mean, Light, Economics

  Joan Robinson (1962). “Economic philosophy”, p.124, Transaction Publishers

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• Democracy entails a correlation between the public interest as expressed by a majority of the population and the governmental policies that affect them. The term encompasses various manifestations, including direct, participatory and representative democracy, but Governments must be responsive to people and not to special interests such as the military-industrial complex, financial bankers and transnational corporations. Democracy is inclusive and does not privilege an anthropological aristocracy.

  Alfred-Maurice de Zayas

  Military, Government, People

  "Report of the Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order". United Nations General Assembly Human Rights Council, Session 24, July 01, 2013.

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