Quotes & Sayings About Agendas

They've pursued their own agendas, and they've done what they've wanted to do and not pursued traditional careers in the music industry. They've followed their own instincts, and they are in many ways maverick performers. — Neil Tennant

Secular humanism proposes ... the complete implementation of the agenda of modernism ... what is necessary for it to occur is a ... New Enlightenment. — Paul Kurtz

Scalia said the court had pretty much signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda, adding: Let me be clear that I have nothing against homosexuals, or any other group, promoting their agenda through normal democratic means. — Antonin Scalia

Many of the vagabonds found me. They despise the way the war is being handled. They see the way your agendas inhibit progress but had no way to let their voice be heard. I gave them a way.-Kara — S.M. Boyce

Funding for the Special Operations Network comes directly from the government. Most work is centralized, but all of the SpecOps divisions have local representatives to keep a watchful eye on any provincial problems. They are administered by local commanders, who liaise with the national offices for information exchange, guidance and policy decisions. Like any other big government department, it looks good on paper but is an utter shambles. Petty infighting and political agendas, arrogance and sheer bloody-mindedness almost guarantees that the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing. — Jasper Fforde

When you understand the values of God's kingdom, you will best understand His agenda.4 However, it is my conviction that the message of the kingdom, and the values therein, are sorely lacking in understanding today. — Tony Evans

Pushing a company agenda on social media is like throwing water balloons at a porcupine. — Erik Qualman

Part of forgiving people is releasing them from our own agendas. — Marianne Williamson

November 27 Share your master's joy! Matthew 25:21 Each of us has dreams. And if we trust Christ with all our hearts, nothing can disable God from surpassing our dreams with His divine reality. The suicide of her husband could not keep God from surpassing Kay Arthur's dreams. Sudden paralysis could not keep God from surpassing Joni Eareckson Tada's dreams. A horrifying ordeal in a Nazi concentration camp could not keep God from surpassing Corrie ten Boom's dreams. God surpasses our dreams when we reach past our personal plans and agendas to grab the hand of Christ and walk the path He has chosen for us. — Beth Moore

There's no legislation with regards to abortion that I'm familiar with that would become part of my agenda. — Mitt Romney

There's nobody in the world that wouldn't change places with the Americans. The economy is phenomenally large, the entrepreneurial class is very alive and very well, the universities, despite budget problems, still turn out something like 90 percent of the refereed academic and technical articles in the world. There's a lot on everybody's agenda. — Tom Peters

Joffy had decided many years before that the problem with religion wasn't religion itself but its flagrant misuse as an absolutist argument to promote narrow tribal agendas. — Jasper Fforde

A leader must not let critics set the agenda. — Rudy Giuliani

Be wary of someone who has never failed, or seem to have no faults... Too good to be true usually is. Perfection hides something. — Henry Cloud

If you look at how I've tried to and how I'll continue to try to govern, I'm not driven by some ideological agenda. I'm a pretty practical guy and I just want to make sure that things work. — Barack Obama

As politicians weigh courses of action against their political agendas the death toll weighs heavy on the conscience of the world. The once vibrant Syrian streets are now haunted by the souls of the innocent and the historic monuments that told of an unrivalled Arab civilisation no longer stand tall. — Aysha Taryam

And often when things turn to TV series there are so many different people with different agendas that things can morph. And so, you know, that was why having the executive producer title was important to me because even if I was the star and I had a concern, you know, that concern would only go so far. But having the title of executive producer actually makes them have to actually listen to me complain. — Debra Messing

ACA is advancing an agenda of dramatic and necessary change in how medical care is delivered in the U.S. — John E. McDonough

Intuition is the highest form of knowledge. What we learn from others can be mistaught by those not a fraction as knowledgeable as they pretend or by those who are propagandists with agendas. We are born with intuition, however, which includes the natural law, a sense of right and wrong. — Dean Koontz

Children need parents who will let them grow up to be themselves, but parents often have personal agendas they try to impose on their children. — Harold S. Kushner

We need to consolidate our enlargement agenda but be cautious with new commitments. — Olli Rehn

Putting first things first means organizing and executing around your most important priorities. It is living and being driven by the principles you value most, not by the agendas and forces surrounding you. — Stephen Covey

This man [Barack Obama] does not have the interests of our country. That's not his agenda. His agenda is to bring us down to a third-world country. — Ted Cruz

Madison's experience at both the state and the federal level had convinced him that "the people" was not some benevolent, harmonious collective but rather a smoldering and ever-shifting gathering of factions or interest groups committed to provincial perspectives and vulnerable to demagogues with partisan agendas. — Joseph J. Ellis

I don't want to be one of these filmmakers that hit you over the head with my agenda or my opinion. I just want to take you down the 50-yard line and let you form your own opinion of what the controversy [of a movie] is about. — Ric Roman Waugh

The key to your success, to my success, to everyone's success is determined by our daily agenda. What you and I do every day is either making us or breaking us, we're either preparing or repairing. So when somebody says, 'John, I want to be a success. Where do I start?' I say, It's very simple. Start with today. — John C. Maxwell

Hypocrisy
/hi pakrise/ noun
1. The moment you tell someone it is not important to be right, in order to look right to everyone else. — Shannon L. Alder

The Earth itself is stepping in to aid in the agenda of cultural transformation. There are too many doorways in nature that lead to heaven, there are too many paths to the mystery for any institution or social policy to be able to thwart the intent of the human species to evolve. — Terence McKenna

The failures of the press have contributed immensely to the emergence of a talk-show nation, in which public discourse is reduced to ranting and raving and posturing. We now have a mainstream press whose news agenda is increasingly influenced by this netherworld. — Carl Bernstein

Honestly, on so many levels, I feel like motherhood has prepared me even better for directing than film school because all it is is troubleshooting and dealing with different personalities and emotions and trying to make everybody happy and at the end of the day reaching your own personal goals and agendas. — Christine Swanson

If you charge off with some political agenda that is not informed by clarity, you are going to end up with business as usual. The road to hell is paved with good intentions but it is not paved with clarity. — Terence McKenna

Why's a sticky word, though. It's not especially productive to think of them as agents with agendas. Better to think of them as - as very complex interacting systems, just doing what systems do. Whatever the reagents tell themselves to explain their role in the reaction, it's not likely to have much to do with the actual chemistry. — Peter Watts

No segment of the population has lost more by the agendas of the liberal constituencies of the Democratic Party than the black population. The teachers' unions, environmental fanatics and the ACLU are just some of the groups to whose interests blacks have been sacrificed wholesale. Lousy education and high crime rates in the ghettos, and unaffordable housing elsewhere with building restrictions, are devastating prices to pay for liberalism. — Thomas Sowell

The concept of God in America is very different than it is in England. Because we see the horrendous outcome of religion as being an American thing, in which the name of God has been hijacked by a gang of psychopaths and bullies and homophobes, and the name of God has been used for their own twisted agendas. — Nick Cave

The hardest task for the historian ... is to consider the evidence without prejudice. We all have prior agendas and tend to find what we're looking for while ignoring anything contrary to our expectations. So history, because it is a human pursuit, is always partial and prejudiced no less than our own interior lives: both are just a sum of contingent memories. — Christopher Evans

Be different, be altruistic. Be strange, work for others in response to their harm. Raise eyebrows, be generous without agenda. — Tsem Tulku

Social Security Works! puts expanding Social Security front and center on the national agenda, where it belongs. Everyone who has a stake in the debate should read this important book. — Bernie Sanders

I think the reason this was so important to Jesus was that He wanted people to know that God is relational - truly relational without any impure or selfish motives. He wanted His Father to be trusted, and therefore He needed men and women who represented this. The psychology of agendas is that they make relationships transactional, which means that people are used for a purpose. People become a means to someone else's end, and this erodes a person's belief that he or she is valued regardless of any production. — Hugh Halter

The loan crisis and the increasing slashing of funds for students, coupled with the astronomical rise in tuition, represent an unparalleled attack on the social state. The hidden agenda here is that when students graduate with such high debts, they rarely choose a career in public service; instead, they are forced to go into the corporate sector, and I see these conditions, in some ways, as being very calculated and as part of a larger political strategy to disempower students. — Henry Giroux

Every movie really does have a message. Somebody somewhere is trying to make a point or advance a cause or promote their agenda. There's nothing wrong with that. They try to do so in an entertaining fashion. — Max Lucado

Bobbing and weaving are methods and maneuvers by which we bend ethics, water down morals, and parse down values to serve our agendas. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

You know what it's like to ride fire in battle," said Roston. "You've watched good men fall around you for causes they don't believe in. You know, Captain, as I do, that many of the things we're ordered to do are done solely to fulfill the self-satisfying agendas or stroke the egos of men who've never risked blood on a battlefield. — Robin Parrish

Going up to Canada is great because I'm not dealing with people carrying their agendas into the room. I'm lucky because 97% of the people who come to the show know who they are dealing with, whether they are on the left or the right, we're sharing the same frustration. — Lewis Black

Climate science has been targeted by a major political movement, environmentalism, as the focus of their efforts, wherein the natural disasters of the earth system, have come to be identified with man's activities - engendering fear as well as an agenda for societal reform and control ... This greatly facilitates any conscious effort to politicize science via influence in such bodies where a handful of individuals (often not even scientists) speak on behalf of organizations that include thousands of scientists, and even enforce specific scientific positions and agendas. — Richard Lindzen

It is concern that precedes and inspires agendas, and survives when agendas fail, and it causes us to try again, always trying our best, never certain about our own judgment. It is knowing that God's purpose exceeds whatever we can put in an agenda. — John C. Danforth

Attempts to nail down "who we really are" most often serve as rhetorical pawns in unwinnable arguments fueled by competing agendas — Maggie Nelson

Whoever sets the agenda controls the outcome of the debate — Noam Chomsky

Representative democracy frequently manifests a disconnect between parliamentarians and the people, so that parliamentarians have agendas that do not correspond with the wishes of the electorate. This has led in many countries to apathy, cynicism and large-scale absenteeism in elections. What is needed is not only parliaments, but parliamentarians who genuinely represent the wishes of the electorate. — Alfred-Maurice De Zayas

When we met, my agenda was "Get Elle Fanning." I believe Elle's was "Get the role." But we didn't know that. — Nicolas Winding Refn

Today, I release the urgency of outer events. I listen to the inner rhythm of God. I set my pace by divine guidance. The world and its busy agendas do not control my soul. — Julia Cameron

You can't "make" someone your soul mate. You can try but it will always be very hard work. Human relationships are hard even when they are easy, so it's important to be in one with a soul mate. She felt she could learn to love Shane; that she might grow to love him over time. She always felt she could make her mind up and then accomplish anything, but the heart and the mind have different agendas. If she was going to try to make this relationship work, it had to come from her heart, not from 'making up her mind'. You don't have to "try" to be anything when you are with your soul mate because they are looking for who you are, not for who you are trying to be. — Kate McGahan

Outside, there was that predawn kind of clarity, where the momentum of living has not quite captured the day. The air was not filled with conversation or thought bubbles or laughter or sidelong glances. Everyone was sleeping, all of their ideas and hopes and hidden agendas entangled in the dream world, leaving this world clear and crisp and cold as a bottle of milk in the fridge. — Reif Larsen

The Cold War's end pushed disarmament down most leaders' agendas. It's a sophisticated issue, which I think is one reason why it is not so hands-on to many people. It's not visceral. It's not like a starving child. — Michael Douglas

I will either adamantly prioritize my agendas at the expense of the truth, or I will consistently bring my agendas into unrelenting obedience to the truth. And if for some reason you're trying to determine who I truly am, the choice I make will tell you. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Critical thinking helps us to more clearly understand situations, patients, colleagues, and our agendas, negative emotions, attitudes, motivations, talents, and growing edges. This not only helps us to have a greater grasp of reality but also stops the drain of psychological energy that is necessary to be defensive or to protect our image. Because critical thinking is not natural, although we may think it is for us, it takes discipline, a willingness to face the unpleasant, and a stamina that allows one not to become unduly frustrated when we do not achieve results as quickly as we prefer with respect to our insights and growth. — Robert J. Wicks

Agendas are what get people, even historians, out of bed in the mornings, though one might hope that, once at the desk, they allow the data to challenge the hypotheses they have dreamed up overnight. — N. T. Wright

I sometimes find that my family's emphasis on stories, characters, and art that appeals directly to children rather than over their heads to adults is not fully appreciated by parents who may have more narrowly adult concerns and agendas. — Mike Berenstain

I have embraced crying mothers who have lost their children because our politicians put their personal agendas before the national good. I have no patience for injustice, no tolerance for government incompetence, no sympathy for leaders who fail their citizens. — Donald Trump

...listen to everyone but believe no one, not even me. We all have our own agendas and we will do whatever we can to accomplish them. — Katie Hamstead

Jesus existed, and those vocal persons who deny it do so not because they have considered the evidence with the dispassionate eye of the historian, but because they have some other agenda that this denial serves. — Bart D. Ehrman

We can think of the land bridge theory as a master narrative that for a couple of centuries has served multiple ideological agendas, lasting despite decades of growing evidence that casts doubt on the way the story has been perpetuated in textbooks and popular media. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

The secret of our success is found in our daily agenda. — John C. Maxwell

Being part of an agenda beyond ourselves liberates us to complement each other rather than compete with each other. — Joseph Stowell

If you ever think you might want a career in politics, Inspector, think again. It's merely a continuous and mostly vain attempt to keep several groups of people with opposing needs and agendas happy, and knowing in your heart of hearts that you cannot, and being lambasted for you hard work in the bargain. — Jasper Fforde

Nothing hinders morale more than when team members with separate agendas are pulling against one another. — Andy Stanley

Republicans advising candidates to "grab onto the best elements of [his] anti-Washington populist agenda," but warning that Trump is a "misguided missile," "subject to farcical fits" and candidates should avoid getting drawn into "every Trump dust-up," but should quickly condemn some of his comments, including "wacky things about women." — Dalia Mogahed

Terry Gross has never had me on her show and you know, it's her show; she sets the agenda and that's not Hodgman. But I'll still listen to it. — John Hodgman

Listen Anna, if we don't believe the things we put on our agendas will come true for us, then there's no hope for us. We're going to be saved by what we seriously put on our agendas. — Doris Lessing

Enough of invisibility, silence, timidity, defensiveness, guilt! An invisible, silenced man was an empty space into which others could pour their prejudices, their agendas, their wrath. The fight against fanaticism needed visible faces, audible voices. He would be quiet no longer. He would try to become a loud and visible man. — Salman Rushdie

The power is to set the agenda. What we print and what we don't print matter a lot. — Katharine Graham

In other words, my literary agenda begins by acknowledging that America has transformed me. It does not end until I show how I (and the hundreds of thousands like me) have transformed America. — Bharati Mukherjee

With an agenda dominated by global security and U.N. reform, it appears that the decisions needed to lift millions of people from abject poverty are not being given the prominence they deserve. — Kumi Naidoo

The therapeutic concerns of the culture too often set the agenda for evangelical preaching. — Albert Mohler

Men are often reluctant to give up their wants and their agendas, when necessary, for their wives. — Tony Evans

The biggest mistake of humanity is to have great agendas without knowing the very purpose of life — Vladimir Vinitzki

My point is, or should be, simple: history happened. The object is not to undo it, distort it, or to make it fit our present political attitudes. The object of history, which each generation properly interprets anew, is to understand what happened and why. A multicultural Canada can and should look at its past with fresh eyes. It should, for example, study how the Ukrainians came to Canada, how they were treated, how they lived, sometimes suffered, ultimately prospered, and became Canadians. What historians should not do is to recreate history to make it serve present purposes. They should not obscure or reshape events to make them fit political agendas. They should not declare whole areas of the past off-limits because they can only be presented in politically unfashionable terms any more than they should fail to draw object lessons from a past that was frequently less than pleasant and less than honourable. Because the past was not perfect, it must not be made perfect today. — J.L. Granatstein

We like to think we're superior to the people who, centuries ago, burned 'witches' for no better reason than a neighbor's belief that his crop failure or impotence was caused by that woman's action. But reporters are still prone to the same mental errors that caused these killings: seeing patterns where there are none, finding causes where there is only coincidence, ignoring our sources' political agendas and turning scanty evidence into panic. — John Stossel

Black America knows better than anyone else the high price children pay for the sexual agendas of adults. — Maggie Gallagher

Our generation, like the one before us, must choose. Without the threat of the Cold War, without the pain of economic ruin, without the fresh memory of World War II's slaughter, it is tempting to pursue our private agendas
to simply sit back and let history unfold. We must resist the temptation. — William J. Clinton

Athletics carries its own set of truths, and those truths are diminished when manipulated by people with agendas. — Chris Crutcher

Somehow, the agenda has been put into the form of talking about a set of transitions from state A, the present, to a state B that's sustainable. The problem is that there is no such state. You have to assume that the transitions are going to continue forever and ever and ever. You have to talk about systems that are continuously dynamic, and that are embedded in environments that themselves are continuously dynamic. — George Cowan

When you become present, your mind is silent. There is no agenda. You are not holding onto anything. You are not seeking anything. You are just here with what is, and it is enough. — Leonard Jacobson

I surrender my anxiety and my sense of urgency. I allow God to guide me in the pacing of my life. I open my heart to God's timing. I release my deadlines, agendas, and stridency to the gentle yet often swift pacing of God. As I open my heart to God's unfoldings, my heart attains peace. As I relax into God's timing, my heart contains comfort. As I allow God to set the tone and schedule of my days, I find myself in the right time and place, open and available to God's opportunities. — Julia Cameron

They think they're really sticking it to you, but they're being - herded. Into the service of agendas they'd never support in a thousand years, if they only knew. And they're dedicated, Daniel. They're ferocious. They fight your wars with a passion you could never buy and never coerce, because they're doing it out of pure ideology. — Peter Watts

Surely the challenge for the church today is to be taken captive by the agenda of Jesus, rather than seeking to mold him to fit our agendas, no matter how noble they might be. — Michael Frost

You can know everything that the books have to say, but ultimately it boils down to whether we do the inner work of devotion and surrender, whether we can put aside our own agendas and allow the spirit to move through us. — Marianne Williamson

2009: e-mails obtained via the Freedom of Information Act revealed that White House Associate Director of Public Engagement was arranging an NEA-hosted telephone conference with tax-supported artists to encourage the creation of propaganda art to generate public support for President Obama's political agendas. — Alexandra York

By all means, let's have free trade and no trade barriers and a common market. But where did it all suddenly become about our own economic and political destiny being surrendered to Brussels with agendas that arguably have very little to do with the interests of the British people and British voters? — Lloyd Dorfman

There isn't much of an agenda lyrically. And I definitely didn't want to write about things I don't know anything about. — Mick Barr

Religion is no longer considered the source of serious truth claims that could potentially conflict with public agendas. The private realm has been reduced to an "innocuous 'play area'", says Peter Berger, where religion is acceptable for people who need that kind of crutch- but where it won't upset any important applecarts in the larger world of politics and economics. — Nancy Pearcey

2014 Lok Sabha Elections is a battle between good governance agenda of the NDA versus the misgovernance and corruption of the UPA. — Narendra Modi

(A)nything not acting as a propaganda arm for the Democrats or the Leftist agenda is considered conservative these days. — Tammy Bruce

Histories of morality are rarely written in order to inform the reader. — John Gray

Folks, Brian Williams isn't the exception. He's exactly what they've taught us to expect from them all. It's not journalism any more - it's entertainment, it's celebrity, it's agendas and it's money. All too often, a lie is now an acceptable way of communicating. To the media, a lie has as much value as the truth. — Wayne LaPierre

Does Facebook behave like a tool in my hand, or a firehose designed to spew at me in accordance with other peoples' agendas? Concretely: can I write my own client to present a filtered view of the Facebook stream, or have other people do that for me? — Eric S. Raymond

If I feel like I'm writing from an agenda, that's when I throw something away. If I have a strategy I feel like I'm doing it for the wrong reasons. — Youth Lagoon

Realize that agendas drive data, not the other way round — Joel Salatin

Our agenda, by necessity, is as complex and encompassing as the problems we face: beware of politicians promising simple solutions. — Amitai Etzioni

The more you do speak from the heart, rather than thumping the agenda, people will listen or relate or open themselves up more. — Drew Barrymore

I think part of the whole agenda of being open for business is about making sure that people can get here and also get there. — Andrea Leadsom