Interest Groups Quotes

• The problem is, of course, that these interest groups are all asking for changes, but their enthusiasm for change rapidly disappears when it affects the core of their own interests.

  Angela Merkel

  Groups, Asking, Enthusiasm

  Interview with Bertrand Benoit, Andrew Gowers, www.ft.com. July 20, 2005.

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• The United Nations has come under the control of outlaw nations and self-serving special interest groups.

  Ginny Brown-Waite

  Self, Special, Groups

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• Campaign finance and ethics reform only works if it curtails all special interest groups equally and does not carve out any exceptions to benefit one party or another. 'Pay to play' reform was passed to limit the influence of big spending contractors over the public officials from whom they are trying to obtain work.

  Thomas Kean, Jr.

  Party, Play, Trying

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• My own views on abortion, I'm not on either pole of that and neither of the interest groups on either end of this issue would probably be comfortable with my views.

  Stephen Harper

  Views, Issues, Abortion

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• There is an abundance of misinformation, exaggeration, and blatant lies being spread by interest groups regarding the prospects for embryonic stem cell research.

  Virginia Foxx

  Lying, Cells, Exaggeration Is

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• I think it's a very important function of art to challenge accepted reality, especially when that reality is created by powerful interest groups.

  Salman Rushdie

  Art, Powerful, Reality

  Source: articles.chicagotribune.com

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• We hear much of special interest groups. Well, our concern must be for a special interest group that has been too long neglected. It knows no sectional boundaries or ethnic and racial divisions, and it crosses political party lines. It is made up of men and women who raise our food, patrol our streets, man our mines and factories, teach our children, keep our homes, and heal us when we're sick - professionals, industrialists, shopkeepers, clerks, cabbies, and truck drivers. They are, in short, "We the people," this breed called Americans.

  Ronald Reagan

  Children, Party, Home

  First Inaugural Address, delivered 20 January 1981

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• When I took the oath of office, I pledged loyalty to only one special interest group - ‘We the people’.

  Ronald Reagan

  Loyalty, Oath Of Office, People

  Economic Recovery Address to a Joint Session of Congress, delivered day 28 April 1981

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• Politicians pay more attention to interest groups than to the public interest.

  Alice Rivlin

  Groups, Attention, Pay

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• I've owned a business for 26 years. My family isn't in politics and my supporters aren't special interest groups in Madison and Milwaukee.

  Mark Neumann

  Years, Special, Groups

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• Government cannot be all things to all people.

  Jane D. Hull

  Government, People, All Things

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• Governments do not necessarily act in the national interest, especially when making detailed microeconomic interventions. Instead, they are influenced by interest group pressures. The kinds of interventions that new trade theory suggests can raise national income will typically raise the welfare of small, fortunate groups by large amounts, while imposing costs on larger, more diffuse groups.

  Paul Krugman

  Philosophy, Government, Political

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• But this is the great danger America faces. That we will cease to be one nation and become instead a collection of interest groups: city against suburb, region against region, individual against individual. Each seeking to satisfy private wants.

  Barbara Jordan

  Cities, America, Groups

  1976 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address, delivered 12 July 1976, New York, NY

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• If one meets a powerful person--Adolf Hitler, Joe Stalin or Bill Gates--ask them five questions: "What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?

  Tony Benn

  Exercise, Power, Accountability

  Members in the Commons Hansard Debates, publications.parliament.uk. March 22, 2001.

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• Much of what candidates have to do is raise money and appeal to constituencies or interest groups that can provide that money.

  Robert Scheer

  Groups, Appeals, Interest

  "Nothing Prepared Me for Bush". Interview with Onnesha Roychoudhuri, www.alternet.org. April 27, 2006.

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• In U.S. politics, 'compassion' means giving money and privileges to well organized interest groups at everyone else's expense.

  Paul Craig Roberts

  Mean, Compassion, Giving Money

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• It takes courage to set priorities because doing so is an admission that American policy cannot be all things to all people - or rather to all interest groups

  Condoleezza Rice

  People, Priorities, Groups

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• If you look at all the lobbyists in Washington, this is not a democracy. This is ruled by special interest groups. That includes the military, the pharmaceutical industry, the people who produce mechanized debt, GMO foods. We are prisoners.

  Deepak Chopra

  Military, Gmo Foods, Gmos

  "The Tavis Smiley Show", www.pbs.org. May 27, 2015.

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• When you question a man's motives, when you say they are acting out of greed, they are in the pocket of an interest group, et cetera. It's awful hard to reach consensus. It's awful hard to reach across the table and shake hands. No matter how bitterly you disagree, though, it is always possible if you question judgment and not motive.

  Joe Biden

  Men, Hands, Greed

  "Best and worst of 2015 commencement address season". "The Five" with Eric Bolling, www.foxnews.com. May 18, 2015.

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• All Politicians should be required to wear uniforms like Racing Car Drivers with patches showing the donations received from special interest groups so we know who has paid them off!

  John Wallace

  Car, Racing, Special

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• Once a bureau is created, its staff becomes a tenacious political interest group, well placed to defend its budget and to make a case for expanding its activities.

  Robert Higgs

  Political, Groups, Staff

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• The money that is spent in elections is absolutely unconscionable - even if it's private money. It's true that one's not corrupted by the expenditure of one's own money, but to some extent the system is. We cannot have a system in which the only people you can count on for a vote that doesn't look as though it might be a vote for a special-interest group are people with enormous fortunes.

  Millicent Fenwick

  People, Special, Politics

  Millicent Fenwick (1982). “Speaking up”, Harpercollins

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• I'm sometimes asked why it is that for 30 years we seem to have trouble in the United States enforcing the rules against illegal immigration, and I'll tell you what the answer is. The answer is that when the television cameras turn off and the spotlight moves to something else, there are a host of interest groups and advocacy groups who work very, very hard to make it difficult to enforce these rules. I'm not commenting adversely on their motivation, but I can tell you the effect of all of this is to wear down the ability of an agency to enforce the law.

  Michael Chertoff

  Motivation, Moving, Agency

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• Stages of life are artifacts. Adolescence is a useful contrivance, midlife is a moving target, senior citizens are an interest group, and tweenhood is just plain made up.

  Jill Lepore

  Senior, Moving, Age

  "Baby Talk" by Jill Lepore, www.newyorker.com. June 29, 2009.

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• Linear programming is viewed as a revolutionary development giving man the ability to state general objectives and to find, by means of the simplex method, optimal policy decisions for a broad class of practical decision problems of great complexity. In the real world, planning tends to be ad hoc because of the many special-interest groups with their multiple objectives.

  George Dantzig

  Real, Mean, Men

  "Reminiscences about the origins of linear programming" by George Dantzig, Mathematical programming: the state of the art, p. 78-86, 1983.

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