#policy

Plato argued that good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will always find a way around law. By pretending that procedure will get rid of corruption, we have succeeded only in humiliating honest people and provided a cover of darkness and complexity for the bad people. There is a scandal here, but it's not the result of venal bureaucrats. (1994) p. 99 ↗

— Philip K. Howard

#bureaucrats #conservative #corruption #government #plato

While the government is "studying" and funding and organizing its Big Thought, nothing is being done. But the citizen who is willing to Think Little, and, accepting the discipline of that, to go ahead on his own, is already solving the problem. A man who is trying to live as a neighbor to his neighbors will have a lively and practical understanding of the work of peace and brotherhood, and let there be no mistake about it - he is doing that work... A man who is willing to undertake the discipline and the difficulty of mending his own ways is worth more to the conservation movement than a hundred who are insisting merely that the government and the industries mend their ways. (pg.87, "Think Little") ↗

— Wendell Berry

#discipline #government #nature #policy #art

I told the President, I told Rahm Emanuel and others in the administration that I thought the policy they took to try to bring about negotiations is counter-productive, because when you give the Palestinians hope that the United States will do its negotiating for them, they are not going to sit down and talk. ↗

— Charles Schumer

#administration #because #bring #down #give

The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls. ↗

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

#divine #fear #floods #flow #hesitate

The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups. ↗

— Henry Hazlitt

#any #art #consequences #consists #economics

Children have in the past and continue to influence policy makers. ↗

— Carol Bellamy

#continue #in the past #influence #makers #past

But, actually, it is only Americans who say that our freedoms and prosperity are the reason foreigners hate us. If you ask the foreigners, they make it clear that it's America's bullying foreign policy they detest. ↗

— Harry Browne

#america #ask #bullying #clear #detest

Palestinian terrorism has to be rejected and condemned, yes. But it should not be translated defacto into a policy of support for a really increasingly brutal repression, colonial settlements and a new wall. ↗

— Zbigniew Brzezinski

#colonial #condemned #increasingly #into #new

The west has a great deal to answer for in the Middle East, from Britain's belated empire-building after the First World War to the US and British policy that condemns modern Iraq to the material and social squalor of a half-century ago. ↗

— James Buchan

#ago #answer #belated #britain #british

Bill Clinton's foreign policy experience stems mainly from having breakfast at the International House of Pancakes. ↗

— Pat Buchanan

#breakfast #clinton #experience #foreign #foreign policy