Public Policy Quotes - Page 2

• For many people, the only reason to do anything is that it's best for them individually. And I think that's why planners have to be more realistic about devising policies so the stakeholders will say, "I see what you mean - that'll help me." I think expecting people to do the right thing for the right reason leads to a lot of failure in public policy.

  Donald Shoup

  Mean, Thinking, People

  Source: la.streetsblog.org

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• When I was growing up, we used to play basketball in a park that was never shoveled when it snowed. The basketball rims were never fixed. And we understood then that there was a relationship between public policy and our quality of life.

  DeForest Soaries

  Inspirational, Basketball, Growing Up

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• I think, Tom Friedman is right, and I think that we have to - we have to have a serious public dialogue to try to shift public policy in that regard.

  Cornel West

  Thinking, Trying, Serious

  "Cornel West Reconsiders President Obama". "Talk of the Nation" with Tony Cox, www.npr.org. August 2, 2010.

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• No Child Left Behind ... is a giraffe with an elephant's body. ... You can't take the vision of Ted Kennedy and merge it to the public policy of George Bush and come out with anything that works.

  Steve Rauschenberger

  Children, Elephants, Vision

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• The world we live in has been and is being increasingly politicized so that our daily experience is more and more a matter of public policy. A lot of fiction comes out of a child's feeling of, "Hey, that's not fair."

  Deborah Eisenberg

  Children, Writing, Feelings

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• Compassion is not a dirty word. Compassion is not a sign of weakness. In my view, compassion in politics and in public policy is in fact a hallmark of great strength. It is a hallmark of a society which has about it a decency which speaks for itself.

  Kevin Rudd

  Dirty, Compassion, Views

  Rudd's first speech as Labor leader, The Australian, December 5, 2006.

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• Nothing disturbs me more than superficiality and mere sloganizing on matters of public policy, and the suspicion that what the speaker is saying represents the full extent of his knowledge on the subject.

  Preston Manning

  Matter, Suspicion, Policy

  "The New Canada". Book by Preston Manning, 1992.

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• Limitation is not a matter of justice. It is a rule of public policy which has its origin in history and its justification in convenience.

  Alfred Denning, Baron Denning

  Justice, Matter, Convenience

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• Soon after a disaster passes, we tend to turn our eyes away and focus our resources on the day-to-day, rather than on preparing for the rare, but foreseeable and potentially catastrophic disaster. It's another form of triage, how much we invest in preparing for that, a very important question for public policy. We are a short-sighted species.

  Sheri Fink

  Eye, Focus, Important

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• If you're working on better conditions for prisoners, if you make that a popular issue and you invite mainstream media to weigh in on that subject, you're going to end up with a much more regressive public-policy environment than if you approach it in a quieter way. It's not because the public is stupid, it's just that people with only a cursory interest in something are going to have a knee-jerk reaction to it. That's impossible to explain in a cable-news media... it doesn't make sense.

  Rachel Maddow

  Stupid, Media, Issues

  "The Lenny Interview: Rachel Maddow". Interview with Grace Dunham, www.yahoo.com. April 21, 2016.

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• As much as I hate his movies, Oliver Stone has an aspiration I admire, and that is that he wants his art to be part of what makes and changes public policy and cultural practice.

  Tony Kushner

  Art, Hate, Practice

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• Democracy, in the United States rhetoric refers to a system of governance in which elite elements based in the business community control the state by virtue of their dominance of the private society, while the population observes quietly. So understood, democracy is a system of elite decision and public ratification, as in the United States itself. Correspondingly, popular involvement in the formation of public policy is considered a serious threat. It is not a step towards democracy; rather it constitutes a 'crisis of democracy' that must be overcome.

  Noam Chomsky

  Money, Community, Decision

  Noam Chomsky (1990). “On Power and Ideology”, p.6, Black Rose Books Ltd.

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• I know that it's probably not a good idea for a comedian, especially a satirist, to support a public policy group or a politician. This is something I learned only too well years ago when I did a fundraiser for Pol Pot. A few years later I saw 'The Killing Fields,' and I've got to tell you, I just felt like a schmuck.

  Al Franken

  Ideas, Years, Support

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• I think a decent society should protect rights to private property within limits, but not concentrations of private power that infringe on the freedom and rights of others, including exploitation of labor, and that convert any democratic forms into what have been called sometimes "hierarchical democracies," like ours, in which some have vastly greater influence over public policy than others. Spelling all of this out is a complex matter that raises many issue and problems that are impossible to address here.

  Noam Chomsky

  Thinking, Democracy, Impossible

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• Companies like Enron have learned that small investments in endowing chairs, sponsoring research programs or hiring moonlighting professors can return big payoffs in generating books, reports, articles, testimony and other materials to push for and rationalize public policy positions that damage the public interest but benefit corporate bottomlines.

  Ralph Nader

  Book, Research, Benefits

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• A good rule of thumb is as follows: If the numbers come from somebody wearing a tie (Wall Street economist or analyst, industry public relations department, captive think tank academic and so on), you ought to be very skeptical. By design messages from these people are intended to move markets, move merchandise and/or move public policy and are not a comment on the state of the physical universe.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Wall, Moving, Thinking

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• Locally lived hip-hop culture that is giving many of America's youth the tool they need to survive and thrive in America, in the face of public policy that have written too many young people off.

  Bakari Kitwana

  America, People, Giving

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• Unpleasant questions are being raised about Mother's Day. Is this day necessary? . . . Isn't it bad public policy? . . . No politician with half his senses, which a majority of politicians have, is likely to vote for its abolition, however. As a class, mothers are tender and loving, but as a voting bloc they would not hesitate for an instant to pull the seat out from under any Congressman who suggests that Mother is not entitled to a box of chocolates each year in the middle of May.

  Russell Baker

  Mother, Years, Class

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• Universality has been severely reduced: it is virtually dead as a concept in most areas of public policy.

  Stephen Harper

  Policy, Areas, Universality

  Stephen Harper's Speech to the National Citizens Coalition's Colin Brown Memorial Dinner, 1994.

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• The weapons-violence hypothesis is far too simplistic a basis on which to base sound public policy.

  Daniel D. Polsby

  Sound, Weapons, Violence

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• But it is also clear that left entirely untouched by public policy, the capitalist system will produce more inequality than is socially healthy or than is necessary for maximum efficiency.

  Barney Frank

  Healthy, Efficiency, Produce

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• Philosophers should consider the fact that the greatest happiness principle can easily be made an excuse for a benevolent dictatorship. We should replace it by a more modest and more realistic principle - the principle that the fight against avoidable misery should be a recognized aim of public policy, while the increase of happiness should be left, in the main, to private initiative.

  Karl Popper

  Happiness, Fighting, Inner Peace

  Karl Popper (2014). “Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge”, p.465, Routledge

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• Tolerance obviously requires a non-contentious manner of relating toward one another’s differences. But tolerance does not require abandoning one’s standards or one’s opinions on political or public policy choices. Tolerance is a way of reacting to diversity, not a command to insulate it from examination.

  Dallin H. Oaks

  Differences, Diversity, Choices

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• I asked the American people do not give in to the fear. Do not give into the frustration. We can disagree about public policy. We can disagree about it vibrantly, passionately, but we are a hopeful people. And we have every right to be hopeful.

  Marco Rubio

  Frustration, People, Giving

  Source: www.foxnews.com

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• To me the separation of church and state is a thread that ought to run through public policy so that we can always recognize that we make laws in this country, based not on theology of any particular group, but on the basis of a commonly shared values of the Constitution itself.

  Barry W. Lynn

  Running, Country, Church

  Source: www.christianpost.com

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