Own Agenda Quotes & Sayings

It's strange: I've done so many things up until I did 'Obvious Child,' including writing children's books and making 'Marcel the Shell.' To me, the through-line is incredibly clear: it all comes from wanting to be connected to my own inner voice and not wanting to be on somebody else's agenda if that means that I can't be myself. — Jenny Slate

A devotee has no agenda of his own. For him, the object of devotion is everything. — Jaggi Vasudev

From this brief account of the origins of the English Reformation under Henry VIII, it will be clear that there are reasons for supposing that Henry's agenda was political, dominated by his desire to safeguard his succession and secure his own authority throughout his kingdom. Through — Alister E. McGrath

I am excited about focusing full-time on talking about my job-creation agenda and building a new economy for Washington state. We have a great chance to seize our own destiny, build our own industries, and create our own technological revolutions right here at home. — Jay Inslee

Clinton knew how to get things done. He was battling the Republicans, and then he basically took a lot of their agenda and made it his own. That's what Obama's not doing. — Dennis Quaid

Virtue," he said. "The real thing. It's not some kind of cuddly teddy bear you can keep on the shelf until you need a hug. It's dangerous, which is why it makes people so nervous. Virtue has its own agenda, and believe me, it's not always yours. The word itself means strength, power. And when it gets loose, you'd better watch out."
Something bad might happen ... "
Impossible. But possibly something painful"
-A Wizard Alone by Diane Duane — Diane Duane

Anybody who imagines that an election can be won under these circumstances by banging on about William Ayers and Jeremiah Wright is ... to put it mildly ... severely under-estimating the electoral importance of pocketbook issues. We conservatives are sending a powerful, inadvertent message with this negative campaign against Barack Obama's associations and former associations: that we lack a positive agenda of our own and that we don't care about the economic issues that are worrying American voters. — David Frum

I had been running as fast as I could for all of my adult life. A person can't listen effectively while running. A running mother is not able to pick up clues. She is not able to let go of her own agenda long enough to stop and listen. — Irene Tomkinson

Michelle Obama has gone from political skeptic to political partner to a woman with a White House agenda of her own, and an approval rating higher than the president's. — Jodi Kantor

The beauty of this idea is that my decision to keep Peeta alive at the expense of my own life is itself an act of defiance. A refusal to play the Hunger Games by the Capitol's rules. My private agenda dovetails completely with my public one. And if I really could save Peeta ... in terms of a revolution, this would be ideal. Because I will be more valuable dead. They can turn me into some kind of martyr for the cause and paint my face on banners, and it will do more to rally people than anything I could do if I was living. But Peeta would be more valuable alive, and tragic, because he will be able to turn his pain into words that will transform people. — Suzanne Collins

That's not the whole of it. As with many other faiths - including our own Christian one - a small group of zealots have distorted Islam to further their own agenda. When many women took to imitating the fashions of the Prophet's wives, some Moslem men saw an opportunity to put all women under their thumb. They espoused foul laws like those allowing a man to beat his wife or force her into his bed. — Matthew Reilly

When we shift from personal purity to personal happiness, we lose biblical hope because we are not focusing on God's agenda, we are focusing on our own. God's agenda is guaranteed on our agenda is not. — James MacDonald

If we allow ourselves to cast aside the unspeakable; refusing to believe in our own capacity for hate, deceit, and destruction, then is there hope for our properity? — William Macmichael

Sir, to deal with foreign rulers is to deal with lies and deceits. All the time. A French king, a Spanish emperor - any one of them - will swear he is your friend, while in truth he has his own agenda that he is pursuing mercilessly, behind your back. It is the way the world works. The key is to recognise that, accept it, and keep moving. Keep stepping lightly as the squares on a chequerboard shift beneath your feet — H.M. Castor

Republicans have succeeded with a social agenda that gets people to vote against their own interests while the Democrats are so elitist that they can't tap into the anger that's real. — Peter Applebome

If you have your own agenda and your own style and you don't easily conform to what the masses are doing, you're looked upon as being difficult. Whereas, I think of it as just being an individual. — Anita Baker

Cancer is such a ruthless adversary because it behaves as if it has its own fiendishly cunning agenda. — Paul Davies

The challenge for UNFPA is to help countries as we always have with no agenda of our own; with sensitivity towards unique cultural values; with an infinite willingness to work with whatever is positive; and with a determination to help countries and people turn universal principles into concrete action. — Thoraya Obaid

I may see a way I want to do something, and I understand when you have a team, everybody can't do their own thing. I'm willing to put my own agenda aside to do what's best for the team. — Richard Seymour

In the thoughtlessness of my incessant hurry, I have made God an 'addendum in' my life verses the 'agenda of' my life. And what I need to hurry up and realize is that with these priorities positioned as such, what I am hurrying to is my own demise. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

TRY: During the day, see if you can detect the bloom of the present moment in every moment, the ordinary ones, the "in-between" ones, even the hard ones. Work at allowing more things to unfold in your life without forcing them to happen and without rejecting the ones that don't fit your idea of what "should" be happening. See if you can sense the "spaces" through which you might move with no effort in the spirit of Chuang Tzu's cook. Notice how if you can make some time early in the day for being, with no agenda, it can change the quality of the rest of your day. By affirming first what is primary in your own being, see if you don't get a mindful jump on the whole day and wind up more capable of sensing, appreciating, and responding to the bloom of each moment. — Jon Kabat-Zinn

When a judge goes beyond [his proper function] and reads entirely new values into the Constitution, values the framers and ratifiers did not put there, he deprives the people of their liberty. That liberty, which the Constitution clearly envisions, is the liberty of the people to set their own social agenda through the process of democracy. — Robert Bork

We must approach the Scriptures with humility and patience, with our own agenda out of the way, and allow the Spirit to stir the deeper meaning for us. Otherwise we only hear what we already agree with or what we have decided to look for! Isn't that rather obvious? As Paul will say, "We must teach not in the way philosophy is taught, but in the way the Spirit teaches us: We must teach spiritual things spiritually" (1 Corinthians 2:13). As Tobin Hart says, this mode of teaching is much more about transformation than information. That changes the entire focus and goal. — Richard Rohr

Defriending in't just unrecognized by some social oversight, it's protected by its own protocol, a code of silence. Demanding an explanation wouldn't just be undignified; it would violate the whole tacit contract on which friendship is founded. The same thing that makes friendship so valuable is what makes it so tenuous: it is purely voluntary. You enter into it freely, without the imperatives of biology or the agenda of desire. [...] Laura Kipnis's book Against Love: A Polemic includes a harrowing eight0page inventory of things people are not allowed to do because they're in romantic relationships, from going out without saying where you're going or when you'll be back to wearing that idiotic hat. But your best friend can move across the country without asking you. — Tim Kreider

Politicians often misuse science for political ends and to pursue their own agenda. — Leonard Mlodinow

Within the first twenty years of our lives, before we are really adult, we make choices motivated by insecurity, fear, and other people's expectations; certinly not guided by clarity and wisdom. We plod along for years living with the wrong career or spousal choice, in a location we did not choose and perhaps do not like, and much more. One day we wake up restless and confused, and acknowledge that we have no agenda of our own, and that we have been living someone else's passion, their dream. — Joan Medlicott

The call to be a disciple of Jesus Christ is open to everyone, but we don't get to write our own job description. If Jesus is Lord, then He sets the agenda. If Jesus Christ is Lord, then your life belongs to Him. He has a plan, agenda, and calling for you. You don't get to tell Him what you'll be doing today or for the rest of your life. — Francis Chan

To fulfill heaven's agenda on earth is not to own an agenda — Sunday Adelaja

Perhaps the deterioration of American education is illustrated by the high correlation between the number of years a person has attended school and his inability to understand the words "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." It is more likely, though, that those who interpret the Second Amendment to preclude an individual right to own guns are driven by their political agenda. Whichever the case, they do themselves no credit when they tell us that a simple, elegant sentence means the opposite of what it clearly says. — Sheldon Richman

Few institutions are considered so universally to have failed as our schools, yet in spite of this dreary record a prescription of increased dosage is making its way to the national agenda. The specifics of this proposal: a) Schools should be open year-round, avoiding long summer holidays for children. b) Schools should extend from 9 to 5, not dismissing students in mid-afternoon as is currently the case. c) Schools should provide recreation, evening meals, and a variety of family services so that working-class parents will be free of the "burden" of their own children. The bottom line of these proposals is reduction of the damaging effects of "freedom" and "family" on a subject population. — John Taylor Gatto

A constant tension exists between an individual's interests, personal needs, and skills, and what the organization requires of her. We've all asked ourselves, How much of my own agenda should I sacrifice in order to help the rest of the staff meet the company's goals? — Pat Heim

Skepticism is no more "neutral" or "objective" than faith. It has thrived in the post-Enlightenment world, which didn't want God (or, in many cases, anyone else either) to be king. Saying this doesn't, of course, prove anything in itself. It just suggests that we keep an open mind and recognize that skepticism too comes with its own agenda. — N. T. Wright

I want a future where women and girls get to be the subject of their own sexuality, not the object of somebody else's. That we are the main characters in our own play, not props in somebody else's - which is how women's sexuality is treated now. Whatever the outside attitudes about sexuality it's always about somebody's agenda for us, and I want a world where we can have our own. — Jaclyn Friedman

Terriers usually have their own agenda, kind of like cats, only with a lot more pointless animation. - Sydney Linden — S.J. Hunter

From his first hours as pope, Francis has re-enacted or spoken of the great pastoral transformation of Vatican II as his own agenda. — Eugene Kennedy

I'd just started to realise how important it was to intersperse my 80 Dates with some normal socialising, preferably with female friends. Dating was really demanding: there was all the stress of preparation and anticipation. Then there was the date intself: fraught with revealing body-language and full of silent 'I can't believe he just said that' moments.
...I needed relaxed, 'no agenda' fun with girlfriends to help offset the pressure of dating and stop me obsessing about 'I can't believe I just said that' moments of my own. — Jennifer Cox

Most people have a very strong sense of organizational ownership, but I think what people have to own is an innovation agenda, and everything is shared in terms of the implementation. — Satya Nadella

The Jews control Hollywood and use it to promote their own agenda. — Marlon Brando

It's when someone has an agenda of their own for the record that it doesn't work for me. — Alanis Morissette

Listening is one of the most important things a brand can do online. If your brand is just broadcasting its own agenda, it isn't truly engaging in a conversation. — Jeremy Goldman

The North Koreans have gained, or bought, a lot of time through the six-party-talks framework to pursue their own agenda. — Lee Myung-bak

There are some die-hard male chauvinist pigs and there are some Neanderthal women who are threatened by equality - but the great majority, polls say 65% to 75% of women of America, of all ages, absolutely identify with the complete agenda of the women's movement: equal opportunity for jobs, education, professional training, the right to control your own body - your own reproductive process, freedom of choice, child care-the whole agenda. — Betty Friedan

She is focused on living her own full life, following her own agenda and cultivating her actual self, rather than reinventing herself or pining away to be someone she's not. — Debra Ollivier

We wake up to be alive and to revive our lives; we don't wake up to keep sleeping! We wake up not just to be alive, but also to keep our works alive and mind the business of the day! When you wake up, revive your work! Sometimes you may just feel reluctant to do something when day breaks, but you must remember that there is always something that needs to be done when day breaks, for each day we meet as we journey in life comes with its own agenda! He who fails to know the real reasons why day breaks shall always abuse the real and true essence of each day, knowingly or unknowingly! Be alive when you wake up and do something with all your might when day breaks for you surely leave a footprint each day you wake up! When you wake up, wake up! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

It is no wonder that advocates of Obamacare blindly push forward with their agenda to force religious Americans to violate their own precepts: in the war between the state and the individual, religion is on the side of the individual and his or her relationship with God. That is why symbolic prayer matters. It is symbolic. — Ben Shapiro

Disappointment often focuses on the failure of our own agenda rather than on God's long-term purposes for us, which may use stress and struggle as tools for strengthening our spiritual muscles. — Luci Shaw

You have a choice. You can continue eating the foods manufacturers want you to buy that are making you unhealthy. Or you can return to eating the foods God provided for you, already magnificently packaged in their own skins, rinds, pods and shells. Foods that contain all the human-appropriate vitamins and minerals you need, and the right proportion of sugar, fat, salt and calories. Will you listen to God, or will you continue listening to the marketing and advertising gurus whose agenda has nothing to do with your health?Cukierkorn, Rabbi Celso; Collins, Susan Ford (2012-10-11). The Miracle Diet: Lose Weight, Gain Health ... 10 Diet Skills (p. 103). — Celso Cukierkorn

I like to think of myself as my own guy. I don't want to be labeled as a Tea Party guy, but I'm not necessarily against their agenda. — David Joyce

We can go on talking about racism and who treated whom badly, but what are you going to do about it? Are you going to wallow in that or are you going to create your own agenda? — Judith Jamison

I wrote a number of poems about Kah Tai lagoon, when Safeway was building that huge, ugly store down there where I used to love to watch the birds nest. That political poem, or environmental poem, was unsuccessful because Safeway built there anyway. And yet the poem has something to say today, as it did then. And I speak here only of my own poems. The agenda for every poet has to be different because most of us write from direct human experience in the world. — Sam Hamill

Do you know why few of us like to wait? We don't like to wait because waiting immediately reminds us that we are not in charge. Nothing more quickly offends our delusions of self-sovereignty than being forced to step out of our own schedules and wait for another. Think about it. You have never gotten angry because you have had to wait for you! Only when my heart is progressively in awe of the agenda of One vastly greater and wiser than me will I surrender my schedule to him and be willing to wait for others. — Paul David Tripp

When one has let go of that great hidden agenda that drives humanity and its varied histories, then one can begin to encounter the immensity of one's own soul. If we are courageous enough to say, "Not this person, nor any other, can ultimately give me what I want; only I can," then we are free to celebrate a relationship for what it can give. — James Hollis

If we allow our self-congratulatory adoration of technology to distract us from our own contact with each other, then somehow the original agenda has been lost. — Jaron Lanier

The problem with the Tea Party is that it's been used in a way that scares people into supporting an agenda that's counter to their own interests. — Matt Taibbi

It's always just a matter of what someone is willing to see and what someone is willing to ignore. I think we are all guilty of overlooking things if it suits our own agenda. But whenever we do, we are always setting ourselves up for disappointment. — Jenny Mollen

In brief, it is now clear that Europe's religious dedication to rules is nothing but a veil under which the strong make up the rules as they go along to suit their own political agenda. Perhaps that would be fine if the said agenda was not quick-marching Europe and the global economy into an economic, political and moral morass. — Yanis Varoufakis

Love is the wanting, and the having, and the choosing, and the becoming. Love is the desire to see the person we love be and become all he or she is capable of being and becoming. Love is a willingness to lay down our own personal plans, desires, and agenda for the good of the relationship. Love is delayed gratification, pleasure, and pain. Love is being able to live and thrive apart, but choosing to be together. — Matthew Kelly

I think cinema should provoke thoughts, sure, but using it as I soapbox I think is the wrong place. I never want to be part of something like that, where there's an agenda there that's not about telling a story, where its someone getting on a soapbox and preaching their own beliefs onto somebody. — Jeremy Renner

I did not go to the Supreme Court on behalf of a class of women. I wasn't pursuing any legal remedy to my unwanted pregnancy. I did not go to the federal courts for relief. I went to Sarah Weddington asking her if she knew how I could obtain an abortion. She and Linda Coffey said they didn't know where to get one. They lied to me just like I lied to them. Sarah already had an abortion. She knew where to get one. Sarah and Linda were just looking for somebody, anybody, to further their own agenda. I was their willing dupe. For this, I will forever be ashamed. — Norma McCorvey

We should not liter the world with our own agenda. — Calvin Tsao

He knows me better than anyone ever has. Than anyone ever will again. I would have stopped it if I could have. But I've learned the hard way, we can't choose who we love. Love chooses us. Love doesn't care about what's convenient or easy or planned. Love has its own agenda and all we can do is get out of its way. — Amy Engel

As a parent, I repeatedly find myself presented with opportunities to respond to my daughter as if she were a real person like myself, with the full range of feelings I experience - the same longing, hope, excitement, imagination, ingenuity, sense of wonder, and capacity for delight. Yet like many parents, I tend to become so caught up in my own agenda that I often miss the opportunity afforded by these moments. I find myself so conditioned to sermonize, so oriented to teaching, that I am often insensitive to the wondrous ways in which my child reveals her uniqueness, showing us she's a being unlike any other who has ever walked this planet. When — Shefali Tsabary

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

The mainstream media has its own agenda. They do not want to print the facts. They have an agenda, they have a slant, they have a bias. It is outrageous to me. — Curt Weldon

Theology is
or should be
a species of poetry,which read quickly or encountered in a hubbub of noise makes no sense. You have to open yourself to a poem with a quiet, receptive mind, in the same way you might listen to a difficult piece of music ... If you seize upon a poem and try to extort its meaning before you are ready, it remains opaque. If you bring your own personal agenda to bear upon it, the poem will close upon itself like a clam, because you have denied its unique and separate identity, its inviolate holiness. — Karen Armstrong

These 'mistakes' occur in my books for a reason. I have an agenda: I'm secretly trying to inspire kids to create their own stories and comics, and I don't want them to feel stifled by 'perfectionism.' — Dav Pilkey

It's normal for human beings to identify with their own separate self. The problem is that we get caught in that notion of ourself as a separate individual and caught in that individual self's agenda. — Nhat Hanh

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

Love doesn't care what you want. Love doesn't care if it's convenient. Love pursues its own agenda, and there's no bullet in the world that can take it down. More's the pity. — Seanan McGuire

I was occupied by a range of questions, often different from those fashionable in the professional philosophy of the past half century, that have sometimes troubled philosophers in the past. It's taken me several decades to work out my own philosophical agenda, and it is wide. — Philip Kitcher

Dachshunds have their own agenda and can be stubborn about seeing their plans through to completion. What Rosie lacked in consistency, she made up for in enthusiasm. Most of the time when I called her name, she sprinted back, her long ears cocked and flying like a little girl's pigtails. Each encounter was a glorious reunion, even if we'd been parted for only a minute or two. I had never felt so loved. — Mary Doria Russell

Even though we were still waiting for Don, therapy was well begun. We were engaged in a subtle, often predictable, and very important contest with the family about who was going to be present at the meetings. Carl and I had revealed some of what our relationship had to offer: a good-humored liking for each other, an ability to cooperate, and an insistence on remaining ourselves. I was clearly not going to be the reverential assistant to the older man. And perhaps most important, Carl had intuitively modeled some of the process of therapy for the family. By sharing insight into his own personality, he was saying by demonstration, It's important to search for you own unconscious agenda. — Augustus Y. Napier

Often a Christian man or woman falls prey to that cruel and vexatious spirit, wondering how to find marriage, who, when, where? It is on God that we should wait, as a waiter waits
not for but on the customer
alert, watchful, attentive, with no agenda of his own, ready to do whatever is wanted. 'My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my expectation is from him.' (Ps. 62:5 KJV) In Him alone lie our security, our confidence, our trust. A spirit of restlessness and resistance can never wait, but one who believes he is loved with an everlasting love, and knows that underneath are the everlasting arms, will find strength and peace. — Elisabeth Elliot

Au contraire, he's the person you wanted to be. One who was less arrogant, and undisciplined as a youth. One who was less like me. The Jean-Luc Picard you wanted to be, the one who did not fight the Nausicaan, had quite a different career from the one you remember. That Picard never had a brush with death, never came face to face with his own mortality, never realised how fragile life is or how important each moment must be. So his life never came into focus. He drifted for much of his career, with no plan or agenda, going from one assignment to the next, never seizing the opportunities that presented themselves. He never lead the away team on Milika Three to save the ambassador, or take charge of the Stargazer's Bridge when its Captain was killed. And no one ever offered him a command. He learned to play it safe. And he never, ever got noticed by anyone. — Q

When it comes to the education of our young, this privilege should only be given to those whose visions are solely in the uplifting benefit of the child. There is no room for the ego in the education of children! Children should not be looked after, nor educated, by those who have not made a sacrifice within their hearts, laying down their own personal agenda and dreams, for the total ascension of the child. Even if you are to educate the children simply sitting under a tree; if you have the vision and the heart of a sage, those children will grow to be mighty men and women under your watch! And even if you wine and dine the children, putting them up in a palace; if you do not have the vision and the selfless heart of a sage, all you do is in utter vanity! — C. JoyBell C.

Southerners have mastered picking, choosing, and rationalizing religious texts to fit their social agenda better than their own mother's fried chicken recipe. — Maggie Young

The Emperor Constantine convened the Council of Nicaea at his summer palace and invited the bishops to attend, all expenses paid. As an added lure, he even mentioned "the excellent temperature of the air." Constantine had his own agenda. He wanted to get this unsettled problem of Jesus' identity straightened out so that Christianity could better serve as cement for his sprawling empire. He — Daniel C. Maguire

If you are not drawing fire from both Pharisees and Sadducees, you are probably saying something other than what Jesus said. And if your message is not drawing both tax collectors (Roman collaborators) and zealots (anti-Roman insurrectionists) to repentance, you are probably speaking with a different voice than does he. Jesus wasn't inconsistent. He saw the Roman Empire, despite all its pretensions to preeminence both in its own mind and in the mind of its opponents, as a temporary obstacle, not the defining point of his agenda. We stand and we speak, with reconciliation in view. We see, therefore, even our most passionate critic not as an argument to be vaporized but as a neighbor to be evangelized. This doesn't mean that we back down one iota from the truth. But we proclaim the whole gospel of truth and grace, never backing down from either. That means taking seriously the arguments of our opponents, not merely caricatures of those arguments. — Russell D. Moore

Our adversaries - our Democratic adversaries - like to be able to portray the Republican Party as a bunch of wingnuts - narrow based, always have some agenda that's not attractive to the public ... That's easier for them, and more fun, than dealing with their own problems. And I think their problems are significant. — Dick Cheney

If something comes along that you don't like, there are a few sort of four-letter words that you can use to push it out of the sphere of discussion. If you were in a bar downtown, they might have different words, but if you're an educated person what you use are complicated words like "conspiracy theory" or "Marxist." It's a way of pushing unpleasant questions off the agenda so that we can continue in our own happy ideology. — Noam Chomsky

Judge Sotomayor is a liberal judicial activist of the first order who thinks her own personal political agenda is more important that the law as written. — Wendy E. Long

Once you start saying, 'Let's talk political, my own politics, my own aspirations,' it can become not just distracting in that it takes time, but it can become confusing and frustrating, and is this now a political agenda or a governmental agenda. — Andrew Cuomo

The Arab representatives and their followers were not interested in the persecuted millions throughout the world; they were fixed on a political agenda that distracted the world from their own serious shortcomings in the human-rights department. — Jack Schwartz

We are free, in the West, to choose; we have real choice to pursue our own desires; we are free to set the goals and contents of our own lives; the West is made up of individuals who are free to decide what meaning to give to their lives-in short the glory of the West is that life is an open book,[1] while under Islam, life is a closed book, everything has been decided for you: God and the Holy Law set limits on the possible agenda of your life. — Ibn Warraq

He had no faith in the power of men to act wisely in their own behalf. It was his view rather that every act soon eluded the grasp of its propagator to be swept away in a clamorous tide of unforeseen consequence. He believed that in the world was another agenda, another order, and with this power lay whatever brief he may have held. In the meantime he waited to be called to he knew not what. — Cormac McCarthy

Here was the real scandal of On Our Backs photography: We were women shooting other women - our names, faces, and bodies on the line - and we all brought our sexual agenda to the lens. Each pictorial was a memoir. That is quite the opposite of a fashion shoot at Vogue or Playboy, where the talent is a prop ...
When we began our magazine, female fashion and portrait models - all of them - were shot the same way kittens and puppies are photographed for holiday calendars: in fetching poses, with no intentions of their own. — Susie Bright

I think the most important quality of a mentor is that they are open to following students where they want to go. Not always pushing their own agenda. — Cordelia Jensen

Three explanations dominate speculation about what Obama is up to. The first is that he's trying to lay the groundwork for his successor, presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton. The second is that he's trying to pad his legacy. The third is that he's trying to 'troll' or bait the GOP into debating his agenda rather than pursuing its own. All are plausible, and none necessarily contradicts the others. — Jonah Goldberg

It has been obvious all along, to anyone paying attention, that the politicians shouting loudest about deficits are actually using deficit hysteria as a cover story for their real agenda, which is top-down class warfare. To put it in Romneyesque terms, it's all about finding an excuse to slash programs that help people who like to watch Nascar events, even while lavishing tax cuts on people who like to own Nascar teams. — Paul Krugman

In just a week, he'd taught her so much. That good, honorable men like him stayed the same after death. That she'd existed for too long with only hatred and revenge in her heart. Love was a much nobler cause to live for. Love didn't follow its own selfish agenda; it was willing to make sacrifices for others. How strange that it took an undead man to show her how to live. — Kerrelyn Sparks

Everyone has his own agenda, and it can overshadow the important thing, which is to capture a great performance. They listen to it and think, "Oh, I'm not mixed loud enough ... I missed a note there ... I'm a half-step off on the turnaround." — Dick Latvala

I'm enjoying the opportunity that 'Parks And Recreation' affords me to exploit my own soapbox agenda, which is to try to encourage people to make things with their hands. — Nick Offerman

My grandparents went through a bad experience themselves; they invested money in a church and got burned - the pastor had his own agenda - and my grandfather lost interest in the church after that. That was when I had the option to not go. 'Grandpa ain't going; I'm gonna stay with Grandpa.' — Curtis Jackson

If you have no agenda of your own, life will work according to its agenda. Your personal agenda is taking you further and further away from that. — Jaggi Vasudev

Everyone had their own agenda. She just had to stop reacting emotionally: decipher the real motives for their behaviour without taking every word as a personal attack. — Abby McDonald

Truth is power, but only when one has patience and requires of it no immediate effect. And one must have no specific aims. Somehow, lack of an agenda is the greatest power. Sometimes it is better not to think in terms of plans; here months may mean nothing, and also years. Truth must be sought for its own sake, its holy, divine greatness. — Romano Guardini

If you're keeping yourself in the bubble and only looking at your own data or only watching the TV that fits your agenda then it gets boring. — Nate Silver

And to know that joy - not just happiness, but true joy - comes when we give up our own agenda and let God work through us. Then we can begin to see the bigger picture, the eternal picture, rather than just the tiny brush stroke of our own lives. — Laura Sobiech

Some countries such as Iran and Syria are using the commotion to distract attention from their own problems with the international community. The Palestinians, who have been deeply divided since their election, have found a common enemy in Denmark that unites them. Extremists and fundamentalists are exploiting the conflict to promote their radical agenda and win new members. — Anders Fogh Rasmussen

The problem with the politicians of both parties in the US is that neither of them have a real agenda except to feather their own nests. They both have their hands deep in corporate pockets. All the rest is sleight of hand and distraction to keep the public occupied with trivia, divided against each other, and thinking their vote matters. — Michael Hogan