Public Policy Quotes

• The best public policy is made when you are listening to people who are going to be impacted.

  Elizabeth Dole

  Leadership, People, Listening

  12 Copy quote

• Governments will always play a huge part in solving big problems. They set public policy and are uniquely able to provide the resources to make sure solutions reach everyone who needs them. They also fund basic research, which is a crucial component of the innovation that improves life for everyone.

  Bill Gates

  Government, Play, Innovation

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• Improving the quality of our lives should be the ultimate target of public policies. But public policies can only deliver best fruit if they are based on reliable tools to measure the improvement they seek to produce in our lives.

  Jose Angel Gurria

  Quality, Target, Tools

  7 Copy quote

• Wishful thinking is not sound public policy.

  Bjorn Lomborg

  Thinking, Sound, Policy

  "Don’t Freak Out". www.nationalreview.com. May 14, 2008.

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• There's a tremendous gap between public opinion and public policy.

  Noam Chomsky

  Public Opinion, Gaps, Policy

  6 Copy quote

• A government which lays taxes on the people not required by urgent public necessity and sound public policy is not a protector of liberty, but an instrument of tyranny. It condemns the citizen to servitude.

  Calvin Coolidge

  Government, People, Presidential

  61 Copy quote

• Avoid any specific discussion of public policy at public meetings.

  Quintus Tullius Cicero

  Government, Political, Politics

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• Racial discrimination does not always violate public policy.

  Trent Lott

  Doe, Discrimination, Policy

  "Lott: Tripped up by history" by Dan Goodgame, Karen Tumulty, www.cnn.com. December 16, 2002.

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• A serious problem in America is the gap between academe and the mass media, which is our culture. Professors of humanities, with all their leftist fantasies, have little direct knowledge of American life and no impact whatever on public policy.

  Camille Paglia

  Media, America, Impact

  Camille Paglia (2011). “Sex, Art, and American Culture: Essays”, p.9, Vintage

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• The greatest difference between now and 1964, when I began teaching, is that public policy has pretty much eradicated the dream of Martin Luther King.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Dream, Kings, Teaching

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• I learned that you have to evaluate the effects of public policy as opposed to intentions.

  Walter E. Williams

  Intention, Policy, Effects

  6 Copy quote

• I know few significant questions of public policy which can safely be confided to computers. In the end, the hard decisions inescapably involve imponderables of intuition, prudence, and judgment.

  John F. Kennedy

  Decision, Intuition, Computer

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• When it comes to public policy, doing the right thing is more important than doing it for the right reason. The best way to get people to do what's right collectively is to make it the best thing for them to do individually. You have to give individuals a personal incentive to do what's right for society.

  Donald Shoup

  Giving, People, Important

  Source: la.streetsblog.org

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• There is a thought that poverty is a public policy failure; poverty is man-made by action and non-action: poverty can be eliminated.

  Benjamin Mkapa

  Men, Poverty, Action

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• The biggest challenge of public policy is to know when and how the world has changed. We are no longer an empty continent with endless absorptive capacity. We have a cash-wage economy that is having terrible problems finding jobs for its own people. The concern about immigration is not nativism but common sense.

  Richard Lamm

  Jobs, People, Common Sense

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• Public policy today is favoring the rich, not the poor. It's not addressing the needs of the poor.

  Joseph Lowery

  Needs, Today, Rich

  "Rev. Joseph Lowery, Author Ron Christie on 'FNS'". "FOX News Sunday" with Chris Wallace, www.foxnews.com. February 13, 2006.

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• My mantra about everything that has to do with public policy is: identify and reject the false choice.

  Kamala Harris

  Choices, Policy, Rejects

  "The Lenny Interview: Kamala Harris, the Senate Hopeful, Going After Revenge Porn". Interview with Doreen St. Félix, www.elle.com. October 23, 2015.

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• Demagoguery beats data in making public policy.

  Dick Armey

  Data, Beats, Policy

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• I want people to see the truth... regardless of who they are...
  because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a
  public.

  Chelsea Manning

  Truth, People, Decision

  "Manning-Lamo Chat Logs Revealed". www.wired.com. July 13, 2011.

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• Doing nothing in the public policy world allows much more to be done in the real world.

  Thomas Hazlett

  Real, Political, Done

  6 Copy quote

• Today, many people take for granted the notion that people whose lives are going to be very heavily affected by public policies should have a say in how they are formulated and carried out.

  Barney Frank

  Should Have, People, Today

  5 Copy quote

• The words of the Declaration of Independence, as given effect by Washington...are to be accepted as real, and not as empty phrases...that in very truth this is a government by the people themselves, that the Constitution is theirs, that the courts are theirs, that all the government agents and agencies are theirs... It is for the people themselves finally to decide all questions of public policy and to have their decision made effective...We here, in America, hold in our hands the hope of the world.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Real, Agency, Government

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• I would advocate that chocolate be covered by health insurance, but that is admittedly a very French public policy perspective.

  Mireille Guiliano

  Perspective, Chocolate, Policy

  Mireille Guiliano (2013). “French Women For All Seasons: A Year of Secrets, Recipes & Pleasure”, p.194, Random House

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• We live today in a world where most of the really important developments in everything from math and physics and astronomy to public policy and psychology and classical music are so extremely abstract and technically complex and context-dependent that it's next to impossible for the ordinary citizen to feel that they (the developments) have much relevance to her actual life.

  David Foster Wallace

  Math, Psychology, Important

  Interview with Dave Eggers, www.believermag.com. November 2003.

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• Public policy in the twentieth century was about protecting and expanding the social compact, based on recognition that effective government at the federal level provides rules and services and safety measures that contribute to a better society.

  Carl Bernstein

  Government, Safety, Levels

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