Public Policy Quotes - Page 7

• Personal religious convictions have no place in political campaigns or in dictating public policy.

  Geraldine Ferraro

  Religious, Political, Atheism

  Geraldine Ferraro, Linda Bird Francke (1985). “Ferraro: My Story”, p.211, Northwestern University Press

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• I do not believe it is the function of the judiciary to step in and change the law because the times have changed. I do well understand the difference between legislating and judging. As a judge, it is not my function to develop public policy.

  Sandra Day O'Connor

  Believe, Law, Times Have Changed

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• It is the inevitable effect of religion on public policy that makes it a matter of public concern. Advocates of religiosity extol the virtues or moral habits that religion is supposed to instill in us. But we should be equally concerned with the intellectual habits it discourages.

  Wendy Kaminer

  Intellectual, Atheism, Matter

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• The natural proclivity of democratic governments is to pursue public policies which concentrate benefits on the well-organized and well-informed, and disperse the costs on the unorganized and ill-informed.

  Peter Boettke

  Government, Cost, Benefits

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• Don't liken me to that [SOB]. Anybody that lets his public policies be mixed up with religious prejudice is a plain [GD] fool.

  Huey Long

  Religious, Long, Prejudice

  "Huey Long". Book by T. Harry Williams, 1969.

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• You know, when I was in college, there was a big debate: Do unions raise wages? Well, with regard to industrial unions, there were arguments back and forth -- international competition. It is now clear, I think, that whether or not you think unions raised wages 50 years ago, the absence of unions and their weakness that is inflicted by anti-union public policy depresses wages. The fact is that people who are not represented, in the service industries in particular, are the victims of policies which depress their wages.

  Barney Frank

  Depressing, College, Thinking

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• Why does a woman carry a gun? Because, under our system, every citizen has the latitude to act in the absence of police; the latitude to act reasonably, to act immediately, to act in defense of self, to act in defense of another, to act with lethal force, to act with her acquired training and to act not in anger but to respond in purpose. To exercise the protections of that latitude in public policy, public interest and practical safety, all that is demanded of her is that she act reasonably under the circumstances.

  John Longenecker

  Exercise, Gun, Self

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• The issue is not that morals be applied to public policy, it's that conservatives bring public policy to spheres of our lives where it should not enter.

  Barney Frank

  Issues, Spheres, Moral

  KUOW.org Audio Program, September 7, 2005.

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• Without seeing any reason to believe that women are, on the average, so strong physically, intellectually, or morally, as men, I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that many women are much better endowed in all these respects than many men, and I am at a loss to understand on what grounds of justice or public policy a career which is open to the weakest and most foolish of the male sex should be forcibly closed to women of vigor and capacity.

  Thomas Huxley

  Strong, Sex, Women

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• Modern women are squeezed between the devil and the deep blue sea, and there are no lifeboats out there in the form of public policies designed to help these women combine their roles as mothers and as workers.

  Sylvia Ann Hewlett

  Mother, Women, Sea

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• The choice made by families not to immunize their children is not supported by public policy or medical research nor should such action be supported by taxpayers in the form of child care payments.

  Tony Abbott

  Children, Choices Made, Research

  Joint statement with Social Services Minister, Scott Morrison, edition.cnn.com. April 13, 2015.

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• Family farmers are victims of public policy that gives preference to feeding animals over feeding people. This has encouraged the cheap grain policy of this nation and has made the beef cartel the biggest hog at the trough.

  Howard Lyman

  Animal, People, Giving

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• According to a Public Policy Polling survey, most Americans find lice and colonoscopies more appealing than Capitol Hill.

  Ron Fournier

  Lice, Hills, Capitol Hill

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• The specter of color is apparent even when it goes unmentioned, and it is all too often the unseen force that influences public policy as well as private relationships. There is nothing more remarkable than the ingenuity that the various demarcations of the color line reflect. If only the same creative energy could be used to eradicate the color line; then its days would indeed be numbered.

  Dr. John

  Color, Creative, Unseen

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• To be true to its constitutional role, the Supreme Court should refuse to be drawn into making public policy, and it should strike down legislation only when a clear constitutional violation exists. When judicial activists resort to various inventions and theories to impose their personal views on privacy and liberty, they jeopardize the legitimacy of the judiciary as an institution and undermine the role of the other branches of government.

  Mark Levin

  Government, Views, Liberty

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• Global Warming: It is a hoax. It is bad science. It is high-jacking public policy. It is the greatest scam in history.

  John Coleman

  Scams, Hoaxes, Global Warming

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• When a person's religious beliefs cause him to deny the evidence of science, or for whom public policy morphs into a battle with the devil, shouldn't that be a subject for discussion and debate?

  Lawrence M. Krauss

  Religious, Battle, Devil

  "Why Are Religious Beliefs Off Limits?" By Lawrence M. Krauss, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 5, 2012.

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• I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials; and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

  John F. Kennedy

  Religious, Believe, America

  Address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, delivered 12 September 1960 at the Rice Hotel in Houston, TX

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• What you always do before you make a decision is consult. The best public policy is made when you are listening to people who are going to be impacted. Then, once policy is determined, you call on them to help you sell it.

  Elizabeth Dole

  People, Decision, Listening

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• Gay people exist. There's nothing we can do in public policy that makes more of us exist, or less of us exist. And you guys have been arguing for a generation that public policy ought to essentially demean gay people as a way of expressing disapproval of the fact that we exist, but you don't make any less of us exist. You just are arguing in favor of more discrimination, and more discrimination doesn't make straight people's lives any better.

  Rachel Maddow

  Gay, People, Guy

  "Rachel Maddow Confronts Jim DeMint, Ralph Reed Over Gay Marriage On ‘Meet The Press’ ", www.huffingtonpost.com. June 30, 2013.

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• Secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Williams Jennings Bryan, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King - indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history - were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. To say that men and women should not inject their "personal morality" into public policy debates is a practical absurdity.

  Barack Obama

  Religious, Kings, Men

  "Leith Anderson, Russell Moore, Other Faith Leaders Ask Obama to Reject Gov't Report Saying Religious Freedom Is Code for Discrimination" by Anugrah Kumar, www.christianpost.com. October 12, 2016.

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  Religious factions will go on imposing their will on others unless the decent people connected to them recognize that religion has no place in public policy. They must learn to make their views known without trying to make their views the only alternatives.

  Barry Goldwater

  Religious, Freedom, Views

  "Excerpts From Goldwater Remarks". Remarks in the Congressional Record, www.nytimes.com. September 15, 1981.

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• There are three critical ingredients to democratic renewal and progressive change in America: good public policy, grassroots organizing and electoral politics.

  Paul Wellstone

  Change, America, Political

  Paul Wellstone (2001). “The Conscience of a Liberal: Reclaiming the Compassionate Agenda”, p.216, Random House

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• Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Science, Discovery, Opposites

  Farewell Address, delivered 17 January 1961

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• I don't know how you feel, but I'm pretty sick of church people. You know what they ought to do with churches? Tax them. If holy people are so interested in politics, government, and public policy, let them pay the price of admission like everybody else. The Catholic Church alone could wipe out the national debt if all you did was tax their real estate.

  George Carlin

  Funny, Sarcastic, Witty

  George Carlin (2002). “Napalm & Silly Putty”, Hyperion

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