Incumbents Quotes

• The incumbents just have a ton more money because they have rigged the system to help themselves, because they have these networks of small donors. Meanwhile, the amount of people, the incumbents being reelected has just been - that has been going up and up and up.

  David Brooks

  People, Helping, Donors

  "Shields and Brooks on the power of campaign donors, baseball vs. baby". "PBS NewsHour" with Judy Woodruff, www.pbs.org. April 4, 2014.

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• I want to be in an industry where the upstarts can grow and displace the incumbents, because that's why there's so much innovation.

  Alexis Ohanian

  Innovation, Want, Upstart

  Source: www.fool.com

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• Fools rush in where incumbents fear to tread.

  Norman Ralph Augustine

  Fool

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• For all their talk about the virtues of democracy, many incumbent politicians really don't like it when voters have a voice-not if that voice is effective.

  Paul Jacob

  Voice, Political, Democracy

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• To give aid to every poor man is far beyond the reach and power of every man. Care of the poor is incumbent on society as a whole.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Men, Careers, Giving

  "Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated". Book by Baruch Spinoza, Part IV : Of Human Bondage, or the Strength of the Emotions, Appendix, 17, 1677.

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• The great and important duty which is incumbent on Christians, is to guard against all appearance of evil; to watch against the first risings in the heart to evil; and to have a guard upon our actions, that they may not be sinful, or so much as seem to be so.

  George Whitefield

  Christian, Heart, Evil

  George Whitefield, Samuel Dres, Joseph Smith (1841). “Sermons on important subjects”, p.234

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• Everyone, including the Athenians [...] are right to accept advice from anyone, since it is incumbent on everyone to share in that sort of excellence, or else there can be no city at all.

  Protagoras

  Cities, Advice, Excellence

  "Protagoras". Book by Plato, Oxford University Press, p. 19, 2002.

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• It's just a lot safer to be an incumbent. So I think they have used the campaign finance reforms. They have passed laws that will help themselves stay in office. And I think that's one of the flaws that we do have in the system.

  David Brooks

  Thinking, Law, Office

  "Shields and Brooks on the power of campaign donors, baseball vs. baby". "News Hour" with Judy Woodruff, www.pbs.org. April 4, 2014.

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• It is easier to disrupt consumer finance. It is much harder to disrupt institutional finance, Wall Street. It is very heavily regulated, and because it is institutional finance, you are dealing with incumbents.

  Brad Katsuyama

  Wall, Finance, Easier

  Source: www.businessinsider.com

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• To carry adequate life insurance is a moral obligation incumbent upon the great majority of citizens.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Majority, Citizens, Adequate

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• Ten of those Republican incumbents, all of whom voted for the impeachment of President Clinton, are from states that Bill Clinton carried.

  Robert Torricelli

  President, Bills, Republican

  "Party strategists eye potential Senate gains". www.cnn.com. February 22, 1999.

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• We hence acquire this sublime and interesting idea; that all the calcareous mountains in the world, and all the strata of clay, coal, marl, sand, and iron, which are incumbent on them, are MONUMENTS OF THE PAST FELICITY OF ORGANIZED NATURE!

  Erasmus Darwin

  Science, Past, Ideas

  Erasmus Darwin (1800). “Phytologia, or the philosophy of agriculture and gardening; with the theory of draining morasses and with an improved construction of the drill plough”, p.560

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• In the next decade, we need to think and act like revolutionaries. We have to innovate, not merely imitate. We will succeed not be following the footsteps of the incumbent, but by introducing new dimensions into play. We need Singaporeans who can lead the way in creating new wealth for our economy.

  Goh Chok Tong

  Thinking, Introducing New, Play

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• I think that many citizens understand how our system works, or rather, fails to work, for structural reasons. But who has the capacity and the incentives to bring change? The banks and other corporations love the system because it allows them to buy legislation that serves their own interests even at the expense of the vast majority of citizens. Incumbent politicians love the system because it allows them to raise millions of dollars toward defending their seats.

  Thomas Pogge

  Thinking, Majority, Dollars

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• In democracy, as quaintly understood, voters pick their representatives. American democracy increasingly reverses that. Legislative districts are drawn to protect incumbents who, effectively, pick their voters.

  George Will

  Democracy, Voters, Protect

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• The reapportionment of 2002 designed congressional districts that favored incumbents of both parties, leaving virtually no room for challengers to be elected. Of 435 members of the House of Representatives, only four incumbents lost to nonincumbents of the other party. In all, 96 percent of incumbents were re-elected. (It was only 90 percent in 1992 and 1982 after the previous reapportionments.)

  Dick Morris

  Party, House, Leaving

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• One kid said to me, he said, Mr. Lloyd, we really owe you. And I explained to him, man, you owe me absolutely nothing. I said, whatever kind of career I had, it has served me well, but you do owe some people. And the people you owe are the folks who are going to come behind you. It's incumbent upon each watch — when you play your 10, 11 years and you're in your group — when you leave, I truly hope that you've done all you can possibly do to leave it a better place for the folks who come behind you.

  Earl Lloyd

  Kids, Men, Years

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• Mitt Romney has to convince the American public that they need to do something they're not usually inclined to do - replace a sitting president with a challenger. And unlike in 1980 and 1992, when the public was persuaded to do just that, the incumbent president has not been weakened by a primary opponent.

  William Kristol

  President, Needs, Sitting

  "Trust the People" by William Kristol, www.weeklystandard.com. June 11, 2012.

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• Nothing is more incumbent on the old than to know when they should get out of the way and relinquish to younger successors the honors they can no longer earn, and the duties they can no longer perform.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Honor, Way, Should

  Thomas Jefferson, J. Jefferson Looney (2004). “The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: 1 October 1814 to 31 August 1815”, p.247, Princeton University Press

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• Since We have created you all from one same substance it is incumbent on you to be even as one soul, to walk with the same feet, eat with the same mouth and dwell in the same land, that from your inmost being, by your deeds and actions, the signs of oneness and the essence of detachment may be made manifest. Such is My counsel to you, O concourse of light!

  Bahá'u'lláh

  Light, Land, Essence

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• God Most High has said, "Is the reward of virtue aught save virtue?" . . . Know, O man, that the covenant of servanthood is incumbent upon you, and that the covenant of Lordship is incumbent upon His magnanimity, as He Most High has said, ". . . and fulfill your covenant, I shall fulfill My covenant."

  Ibn Ata Allah

  Men, Covenant, Rewards

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• At a time when science plays such a powerful role in the life of society, when the destiny of the whole of mankind may hinge on the results of scientific research, it is incumbent on all scientists to be fully conscious of that role, and conduct themselves accordingly.

  Joseph Rotblat

  Powerful, Destiny, Play

  Joseph Rotblat, Daisaku Ikeda (2007). “A Quest for Global Peace: Rotblat and Ikeda on War, Ethics and the Nuclear Threat”, p.134, I.B.Tauris

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• Child abuse is a heinous and personally damaging crime; it is therefore incumbent on the Church to treat such matters with the utmost seriousness.

  John Sentamu

  Children, Abuse, Church

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• Could there possibly have been an incumbent more easy to knock-off than George W. Bush? A real-life opposition party would have been insulted to be matched with a such an unworthy and frail rival. The Democrats, by contrast, got their lights punched out.

  Marc Cooper

  Real, Party, Light

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• George W. Bush, 43rd president of the United States, became the first incumbent president to increase his majority in both the Senate and the House and to increase his own vote (by over 3.5 million) since Franklin D. Roosevelt, political genius of the 20th century, in 1936.

  Peggy Noonan

  House, Political, President

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