Quotes & Sayings About Policy

You shut the door, you tell the boss exactly what you think. But when the door opens, the job of the vice president is to stand right next to the president and implement the policy that he's decided. And I'm prepared to do that. — Mike Pence

Never in history have lies been such vital instruments of diplomacy and policy. — Max Hastings

White House officials acknowledge in broad terms that a president's time and public rhetoric are among his most valuable policy tools. — Barton Gellman

We have an economic policy that is just about 10,000 years out of date. — Louis O. Kelso

Oh, I think the biggest lesson in Wisconsin is that 60 percent of the people do not believe that recall elections were proper for policy differences, short of some criminal offense. — Martin O'Malley

The test of a progressive policy is not private but public, not just rising income and consumption for individuals, but widening the opportunities and what Amartya Sen calls the 'capabilities' of all through collective action. But that means, it must mean, public non-profit initiative, even if only in redistributing private accumulation. Public decisions aimed at collective social improvement from which all human lives should gain. That is the basis of progressive policy - not maximising economic growth and personal incomes. Nowhere will this be more important than in tackling the greatest problem facing us this century, the environmental crisis. Whatever ideological logo we choose for it, it will mean a major shift away from the free market and towards public action, a bigger shift than the British government has yet envisaged. And, given the acuteness of the economic crisis, probably a fairly rapid shift. Time is not on our side. — Eric Hobsbawm

Social media has given companies access to unprecedented amounts of information on client behavior and preferences - so-called Big Data. But making sense of it all and turning it into actionable policy has been elusive. — Ryan Holmes

Restrictionistic ideas have never met with any measure of popular sympathy except after a time of monetary depreciation when it has been necessary to decide what should take the place of the abandoned inflationary policy. — Ludwig Von Mises

Together, these advocates create a pro-Israeli case so compelling that the idea and reality of Israel has worked itself deep into American culture, politics and foreign policy. Many American Jews refuse to accept it, but the real debate between Israel's supporters and detractors in America is all but over. — Aaron David Miller

Abroad, our most important policy is to support our troops and continue forward-thinking foreign policy in the war on terror - keeping our enemies on the run and hitting them before they hit us. — Christopher Bond

Cave divers, of course, deal with an elevated level of risk, and the most that I can say here is that we tend to conduct our work at the bottom of a deep cave on an extremely conservative basis with heavy levels of backup equipment and a policy to abort if any single person doesn't like the situation underwater at any time during the mission. — William Stone

The United States is pushing as policy division of the world into rival currency camps - the dollar area on the one hand, and the Russia-Chinese-Shanghai Cooperation Organization group on the other, especially now that the IMF has changed its rules. People think that if there are rival currency groupings and national currencies are going bust, we might as well use gold as a safe haven. — Michael Hudson

Well, Mark, I led the charge for five or six years to get reforms for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I was chairman of an organization called 'FM Policy Focus.' What we were saying was, if there was blip in the housing market, Fannie and Freddie would destabilize the greatest economy in the world. — J. C. Watts

Analysis predating [Milton] Friedman's gave a different answer to question of the Fed's policy errors [during the Great Depression] and new scholarship is validating the old wisdom. It now appears that Friedman will be merely an interlude between the sounder analysis of economists contemporary to the Great Depression and those who have rediscovered their insights. --Jeff Herbener — David Howden

Well, Mr Obama inherited probably the biggest inventory of problems, certainly foreign policy problems, than any American president ever has. I think the entire inventory of problems that he inherited is probably as big overall as any president, certainly since Franklin Roosevelt and maybe, in some cases, worse. — Chuck Hagel

In most recent times, as the West started being hostile to us, we deliberately declared a Look East policy. — Robert Mugabe

It would be our policy to use nuclear weapons wherever we felt it necessary to protect our forces and achieve our objectives. — Robert McNamara

The question is what will Mitt Romney do as president if his policy is simply to be hands off and let the government be made so small it can be drowned in a bathtub. In the 21st century global economy, no state alone has the ability to compete against China. — Jennifer Granholm

Science Magazine wouldn't in a dream think about publishing a single Chinese term. Chinese words and brands must be suppressed, crushed even, hold back at all costs. — Thorsten J. Pattberg

President Obama's first term in office has been better for intentions than for actual changes in planning and policy. I do believe, and he has several things to this effect, that he would like to provide universal preschool or at least far more preschool for our children. — Jonathan Kozol

I call it the "Fuck up, own up, and get up" policy. Make a mistake, admit it, and move on. We all screw up, but a man solves his problems. He doesn't make them worse. — Penelope Douglas

What we are seeing now is customers shifting their attention from security products like firewalls and intrusion sensors, to the policies that need to be in place, and the technologies that help them enforce policy compliance. — John W. Thompson

Bush had expertise in one thing: How to run a Presidential campaign. He understands campaigns and Presidential politics. He has no interest or disposition or I think probably - he's not stupid, but he's not bright, he's not a rocket scientist - he isn't interested in policy. — John Dean

More and more individuals worldwide are realizing that war does not solve conflict, nor resolve long-standing cycles of violence. As more of those who have this understanding communicate it to policy-makers and more particularly, start implementing it in their own lives and localities, change will start to happen. — Scilla Elworthy

How easy it is for generous sentiments, high courtesy, and chivalrous courage to lose their influence beneath the chilling blight of selfishness, and to exhibit to the world a man who was great in all the minor attributes of character, but who was found wanting when it became necessary to prove how much principle is superior to policy. — James F. Cooper

One of the things I think a lot about, I am perhaps a great example of the enlightened immigration policy of this country where I was able to come here to study and then stay back and work and build a life. — Satya Nadella

Conservatives have long advanced the idea that our military can - and should - be used to shape foreign policy; our strength is the size and capacity of our military. They have advanced a retributive crime policy - punish the wrongdoers, no need to look at systemic causes of crime. The "war on terror" activates these deep frames, and politicians, the media, and the public continue to use the phrase because the conservative deep frames have become so pervasive. If — George Lakoff

Climate policy has almost nothing to do anymore with environmental protection, says the German economist and IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer. The next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the worlds resources will be negotiated. — Ottmar Edenhofer

It should be clear to everyone that the nation's steadfast policy should afford every American of working age a realistic opportunity to acquire the ownership and control of some meaningful form of property in a growing national economy. — Ronald Reagan

Throughout the 20th century, the Republican Party benefited from a non-interventionist foreign policy. Think of how Eisenhower came in to stop the Korean War. Think of how Nixon was elected to stop the mess in Vietnam. — Ron Paul

...And unpredictability can spread: one powerful outlier can pave the way for others, and as more states joint the outlier, the foundations of the rule of law begin to crumble.

US counterterrorism practices--and the legal theories that under-pin them--are undermining the international rule of law in precisely this way... — Rosa Brooks

Proposition 19 already is a winner no matter what happens on election day. The mere fact of its being on the ballot has elevated and legitimized public discourse about marijuana and marijuana policy in ways I could not have imagined a year ago. — George Soros

From the totalitarian point of view history is something to be created rather than learned. A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened. Then again, every major change in policy demands a corresponding change of doctrine and a revelation of prominent historical figures. This kind of thing happens everywhere, but is clearly likelier to lead to outright falsification in societies where only one opinion is permissible at any given moment. Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth. — George Orwell

Germany is dictating its policy in Europe — Christopher A. Pissarides

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded ... 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

Our policy is European and Euro-Atlantic integration. There is no substitute for NATO. — Bidzina Ivanishvili

I am passionately invested in the survival of Israel and everything Israel represents. But I am extremely critical of much of its policy. I believe that the occupation must end. And if it doesn't, it will end Israel. I'm not in favor of settlements. — Simon Schama

Everything we do in public policy prevents us from doing something else. To govern is to choose. — Richard Lamm

If we want to think about racism and how it might play out in drug policy, we have to think about the trial of George Zimmerman. We think about the prosecution, when they said "race is not a factor." It's so dishonest. — Carl Hart

The monetary policy of the United States has a major impact on global liquidity and capital flows and therefore, the liquidity of the U.S. dollar should be kept at a reasonable and stable level. — Hu Jintao

An overall picture of how a developing country with considerable amount of natural resources may get in trouble can be described by discussing the lack of absorption capacity where overspending on domestically produced goods leads to increased price level.Further, an inefficient choice of public policy cause poor economic performance through the mismanagement of budget expenditure. In this case governments undertake projects not to achieve social optimality rather to increase their fame. Hence "easy money" may easily lead to increased corrupt activities in contracting projects thereby affecting negatively the transparency level and the competitiveness of market economy — Anonymous

For three thousand years it had been the concent's policy to accept any and all folding chairs and collapsible tables made available to it, and never throw one away. On one and only one occasion, this had turned out to be a wise policy: the millennial Apert of 3000, when 27,500 pilgrims had swarmed in through the gates to enjoy a square meal and see the End of the World. We had folding chairs made of bamboo, machined aluminum, aerospace composites, injection-molded poly, salvaged rebar, hand-carved wood, bent twigs, advanced newmatter, tree stumps, lashed sticks, brazed scrap metal, and plaited grass. Tabletops could be made of old-growth lumber, particle board, extruded titanium, recycled paper, plate glass, rattan, or substances on whose true nature I did not wish to speculate. Their lengths ranged from two to twenty-four feet and their weights from that of a dried flower to that of a buffalo. — Neal Stephenson

The one consistent policy running through this [Clinton] administration is the love it has lavished on Marxists
food aid for North Korea, diplomatic recognition of the Hanoi regime, chronic kowtowing to Beijing and now doing Castro's dirty work. How can the Clinton gang
which carried the Viet Cong flag during anti-war demonstrations and decorated their dorm rooms with pictures of Che Guevara
not feel contempt for people who insist, with every fiber of their being, that communism is mankind's mortal enemy? — Don Feder

It's traditionally not federal policy to fund state and local salaries. It's done sometimes on a temporary basis or a grant basis. But it's not often done. And the reason is clear, because the federal government can't continue in perpetuity these programs. — Jim Talent

The impact of all these restrictions is on poor women, because women who have means, if their state doesn't provide access, another state does ... It makes no sense as a national policy to promote birth only among poor people. — Ruth Bader Ginsburg

If the militarily most powerful and least threatened states need nuclear weapons for their security, how can one deny such security to countries that are truly insecure? The present nuclear policy is a recipe for proliferation. It is a policy for disaster. — Joseph Rotblat

What I don't understand is how a policy against outing trumps a policy of reporting. Whenever you're reporting on hypocrisy, you're kind of 'outing' something to begin with. — Kirby Dick

The explosion of opportunities for litigation gave access and therefore power to many formerly excluded groups, beginning with African Americans. For this reason, litigation and the right to sue has been jealously guarded by many on the progressive left. But it also entailed large costs in terms of the quality of public policy. — Francis Fukuyama

We should focus on what people get done, not on how many hours or days worked. Just as we don't have a nine-to-five policy, we don't need a vacation policy. — Richard Branson

Louella remarked that when foreign nations had intercourse with this country they knew they had been intercoursed. — Jack Woodford

The successful conduct of economic policy is possible only if there is - and is seen to be - full agreement between the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. — Nigel Lawson

The message sent by this policy is that if women are to be accepted into the exclusive ranks of men, then they have to look like men: buttoned up, stuffy, and no-nonsense. As if to show a little cleavage, to highlight a curvaceous figure, or to in any way appear feminine would discount, discredit, and disqualify them.
I strongly disagree with this idea. I feel that women should wear clothes that suit their bodies rather than forcing themselves into unflattering men's suits and that it is feminist to to make a wide range of women's clothes acceptable business attire. — Tim Gunn

I'm not a policy expert - I am only arguing that there is more to an education than an economic ticket. — Rebecca Mead

We live in a period of great polarities: in art, in public policy, in morality. In poetry, art seems, at one extreme, rhymed good manners, and at the other, chaos. — Louise Gluck

Economists agree about economics - and that's a science - and they disagree about economic policy because that's a value judgment ... I've had profound disagreements on policy with the famous Milton Friedman. But, on economics, we agree. — Franco Modigliani

The actual legacy of Desert Storm was to plunge the United States more deeply into a sea of difficulties for which military power provided no antidote. Yet in post-Cold War Washington, where global leadership and global power projection had become all but interchangeable terms, senior military officers...were less interested in assessing what those difficulties might portend than in claiming a suitably large part of the action. In the buoyant atmosphere of that moment, confidence in the efficiency of American arms left little room for skepticism and doubt. As a result, senior military leaders left unasked questions of fundamental importance. What if the effect of projecting U.S. military power was not to solve problems, but to exacerbate them? What if expectations of doing more with less proved hollow? What consequences would then ensue? Who wear bear them? — Bacevich

It is no policy to let thy lusts have arms, which are sure to rise and declare against thee when thine enemy comes. — William Gurnall

Stalin is sacrosanct and certain aspects of his policy must not be seriously discussed. — George Orwell

I met many Russians over the years who were convinced my brothers and I were a cabal, pulling strings behind the scenes to shape American policy. The Soviets had no conception of how a pluralistic democracy works and believed elected officials, up to and including the president of the United States, were only figureheads acting out the roles dictated to them by the real "powers that be" - in this case, my family. — David Rockefeller

Investing in foreign aid would also help achieve China's strategic objectives, since aid could become a powerful tool in the expansaion of China's influence. — Wang Yizhou

Being a good, innovative librarian means taking a humanistic stance toward policy, decision-making, and experimentation. It means focusing on the heart. — Michael Stephens

I teach child development and social policy as an undergraduate course, and I tell my students, "Look, on any of these issues, if you don't want to work on it for thirty years, don't start." — Edward Zigler

Fracking is doable if there's full disclosure of all chemicals used. Secondly, science dictates the policy rather than politics. Third, there's collaboration between environmental groups and the natural gas industry. — Bill Richardson

According to historian Ellen Hammer, he (Pres. Kennedy) was, 'shaken and depressed.' to realize that, 'the first Catholic ever to become a Vietnamese chief of state was dead, assassinated as a direct result of a policy authorized by the first American Catholic president.' At one point an aide tried to console him by reminding him that Diem and Nhu had been tyrants.
'No," he replied. "They were in a difficult position.' They did the best they could for their country. — Stephen Kinzer

From the Great Depression, to the stagflation of the seventies, to the current economic crisis caused by the housing bubble, every economic downturn suffered by this country over the past century can be traced to Federal Reserve policy. The Fed has followed a consistent policy of flooding the economy with easy money, leading to a misallocation of resources and an artificial 'boom' followed by a recession or depression when the Fed-created bubble bursts. — Ron Paul

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

The public is not to see where power lies, how it shapes policy, and for what ends. Rather, people are to hate and fear one another. — Noam Chomsky

China is very entrepreneurial but has no rule of law. Europe has rule of law but isn't entrepreneurial. Combine rule of law, entrepreneurialism and a generally pro-business policy, and you have Apple. — Marc Andreessen

Perceptions of black criminality aren't likely to change until black behavior changes. Rather than address that challenge, however, too many liberal policy makers change the subject. Instead of talking about black behavior, they want to talk about racism or poverty or unemployment or gun control. — Jason L. Riley

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

What is surprising is not the magnitude of our forecast errors, but our absence of awareness of it. This is all the more worrisome when we engage in deadly conflicts: wars are fundamentally unpredictable (and we do not know it). Owing to this misunderstanding of the causal chains between policy and actions, we can easily trigger Black Swans thanks to aggressive ignorance-like a child playing with a chemistry kit. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Our policy is guided by the principle that we will keep unauthorized aliens out of the United States, welcome legal immigrants, and protect refugees from harm. Our solutions rely on working in partnership with States and communities. — William J. Clinton

...the whole of American life was organized around the cult of the powerful individual, that phantom ideal which Europe herself had only begun to outgrow in her last phase. Those Americans who wholly failed to realize this ideal, who remained at the bottom of the social ladder, either consoled themselves with hopes for the future, or stole symbolical satisfaction by identifying themselves with some popular star, or gloated upon their American citizenship, and applauded the arrogant foreign policy of their government. — Olaf Stapledon

Like how the government of General Abacha was using its foreign policy to legitimize itself in the eyes of other African countries. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I challenge anybody to say that I wouldn't know how to approach foreign policy because, unlike some of the other people, I at least have a foreign policy philosophy, which is an extension of the Reagan philosophy. Peace through strength, and my philosophy is peace through strength and clarity. — Herman Cain

And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers. — Thomas Jefferson

Our stand is that of the proletariat and of the masses. For members of the Communist Party, this means keeping to the stand of the Party, keeping to Party spirit and Party policy. — Mao Zedong

Gas is by far and away the most important element of our energy policy. — Jim Ratcliffe

I'm a war president. I make decisions here in the Oval Office and foreign policy matters with war on my mind. — George W. Bush

Our current energy policy is bankrupt. — Jim Costa

You can't hope for a better result as a campaigner than to have the prime minister announce a major policy change within 48 hours of your documentary. — Heather Brooke

I suppose that if we in intelligence were one day given three wishes, they would be to know everything, to be believed when we spoke, and in such a way to exercise an influence to the good in the matter of policy. — Sherman Kent

Through a policy driven approach we have wage a war against poverty and we are confident we will win this war. — Narendra Modi

In the modern world, those who are weak will get unambiguous advice from foreign visitors which way to go and what policy course to pursue. — Vladimir Putin

The Saudis and Emiratis blame all of this on Iran. I think they'd have to grant, that as has been said, that the Houthis are an internally generated movement in Yemen and the Saudis were supposed to be dealing with the Houthis, who started out in essence along their border. So one of the things that we're seeing is a complete failure of Saudi policy toward Yemen over the past 10 years, but the Saudis totally believe that the reason the Houthis are able to succeed militarily is the amount of money, advice, and guns they are receiving from Iran. — Elliott Abrams

Everyone in the Middle East pretty much wants to come and be an American citizen, but pretty much everybody is angry with the U. S. foreign policy. — Mohamed ElBaradei

There is only one China. Taiwan is not independent. It does not enjoy sovereignty as a nation, and that remains our policy, our firm policy. — Colin Powell

An uplifting sense of purpose is more than an impetus for individual accomplishment, it is also a necessary insurance policy against expediency and impropriety. — Gary Hamel

Clinton saw himself much more as the steward of alliances and of consensus that moved in the right direction. He didn't see himself as someone who could change the overall thrust, I think, of global policy. — Barton Gellman

Secretary Clinton has dramatically changed the face of U.S. foreign policy globally for the good. But I wish she had been unleashed more by the White House. — Richard Armitage

To involve young people and make sure that the system is more relevant to them in Scotland, we have a clear obligation to implement a policy of home rule. — Charles Kennedy

It was an idea we had when Al was in the Senate - to organize and moderate an annual conference that would look at government policy through the lens of the family to help identify ways that the family can be supported and strengthened. — Tipper Gore

The sober people of America are weary of the fluctuating policy which has directed the public councils. They have seen with regret and indignation that sudden changes and legislative interferences, in cases affecting personal rights, become jobs in the hands of enterprising and influential speculators, and snares to the more-industrious and less informed part of the community. They have seen, too, that one legislative interference is but the first link of a long chain of repetitions, every subsequent interference being naturally produced by the effects of the preceding. — James Madison

I see the policy of opposing same-sex marriages or unions, whatever you call it, as bigotry or discrimination. — Patrick J. Kennedy

Policy makers and politicians want more STEM; educators want more STEAM. Both, in ways that are eerily similar, are engaging in social engineering to support an ideology. At the macro-level, in both worlds, it's all about teaching a point of view, rather than teaching students to learn. We seem hell bent on an arbitrarily linear approach to engineering a "useful" or job-securing education, from which we continue to get mixed results. — Henry Doss

One of the first essentials is a policy of unreserved political cooperation with all the nations of the world. — Arthur Henderson

American foreign policy was a mirror image of Russian foreign policy: whatever the Russians did, we did in reverse. American domestic policies were conducted under a kind of upside-down Russian veto: no man could be elected to public office unless he was on record as detesting the Russians, and no proposal could be enacted, from a peace plan at one end to a military budget at the other, unless it could be demonstrated that the Russians wouldn't like it. — Archibald MacLeish

We have a right to expect that the best trained, the best educated men on the Pacific slope, the Rocky Mountains, and great plains States will take the lead in the preservation and right use of forests, in securing the right use of waters, and in seeing that our land policy is not twisted from its original purpose, but is perpetuated by amendment, by change when such change is necessary in the life of that purpose, the purpose being to turn the public domain into farms each to be the property of the man who actually tills it and makes his home in it. — Theodore Roosevelt

The high-minded definition of politics is: 'the art or science of government; the art or science concerned with guiding or influencing governmental policy.' It is only when you keep reading in Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary that you get closer to the truth: 'political activities characterized by artful and often dishonest practices'. — Cal Thomas

American foreign policy is not understood by the vast majority of American people. And that this is due to a media that in this country is suppressed by Washington and by the owners of this media, who often tend to be corporate entities close to the [White House] and very often are arms manufacturers with a vested interest in chaos [in] the Middle East. And as a result Americans do not actually get both sides of the story. — Denis Halliday