Quotes & Sayings About Policy Makers

Wherever there is injustice, there is anger, and anger is like gasoline - if you spray it around and somebody lights a matchstick, you have an inferno. But anger inside an engine is powerful: it can drive us forward and can get us through dreadful moments and give us power. I learnt this with my discussions with nuclear policy makers. — Scilla Elworthy

Judges are required by our democratic system not to overstep their positions to become policy makers or super-legislators. — Chuck Grassley

Eventually, I came to understand that a group of people who wield enormous power happen, oddly enough, to espouse some of the very same ideals imparted to me by people in Africa and central Asia who have no power at all. The reason for this, in my view, is that members of the armed forces have worked on the ground-in many cases, during three or four tours of duty-on a level that very few diplomats, academicians, journalists, or policy makers can match. And among other things, this experience has imbued soldiers with the gift of empathy. — Greg Mortenson

Policy makers and business leaders take note: money matters. But often the best use of money as a motivator is to pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table - so that people can focus on the work rather than on the cash. — Daniel H. Pink

It is hard to realize today that "government" during the American Civil War a hundred years ago meant the merest handful of people. Lincoln's Secretary of War had fewer than fifty civilian subordinates, most of them not "executives" and policy-makers but telegraph clerks. The entire Washington establishment of the U.S. government in Theodore Roosevelt's time, around 1900, could be comfortably housed in any one of the government buildings along the Mall today. — Peter F. Drucker

Homelessness came into being because liberal policy makers embraced a series of foolish ideas. — Mona Charen

Global warming - at least the modern nightmare vision - is a myth. I am sure of it and so are a growing number of scientists. But what is really worrying is that the world's politicians and policy makers are not. — David Bellamy

An overwhelming number of economists, international civil servants, and policy-makers argue that a fragmentation of the Eurozone would cause a new depression and massive wealth destruction around the world. It would also end the period of economic integration that has characterized world politics since the end of the Cold War. — Klaus Schwab

We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action. — Murari Lal Sharma

Children have in the past and continue to influence policy makers. — Carol Bellamy

Toward the end of the Second World War, a
new consciousness arose amongst the public
and policy makers of the Western World. After
ten years of crippling economic depression
and another five at war, the public demanded
something new from their disintegrating
urban environments. — Lucas Mascotto-Carbone

If civilization is going to survive, business and policy-makers must move on, to find within themselves more developed emotions than fear or greed. — Anita Roddick

Policy makers beware: unless you are ready to admit that you are facing an essentially theological problem in the Middle East, do not go about prescribing solutions, for you may actually make matters worse - particularly by creating the false impression that economic, sociological, or political programs can fix what is, in fact, a delusion of faith — Robert Reilly

If scientists can't communicate with the public, with policy makers, with one another, the future is going to be held back. We're not going to have the future that we could have. — Alan Alda

Given our inevitably incomplete knowledge about key structural aspects of an everchanging economy and the sometimes asymmetric costs or benefits of particular outcomes, a central bank needs to consider not only the most likely future path for the economy but also the distribution of possible outcomes about that path. The decision makers then need to reach judgment about the probabilities, costs and benefits of the various possible outcomes under alternative choices for policy. — Alan Greenspan

Hillary Brown understands that?for our grandchildren's sake?we must rebuild America and, in doing so, re-imagine our interconnected infrastructure systems to make them more efficient, environmentally safe, and resilient in this age of global urbanization. This fascinating and important book should be required reading for our elected officials and policy-makers. — Felix Rohatyn

It's the difference between utility and virtue. Many policy makers now think of education in functional terms. It's about learning skills that will help students find employment - such as using a word processor or spreadsheet. Yet what about helping people to figure out the meaning of life? Or become good people? Or make a difference to others? Is education for a stage in life, completed once we find jobs, or should it be a lifelong pursuit? — Alister E. McGrath

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

The resistance of policy-makers to intelligence is not just founded on an ideological presupposition. They distrust intelligence sources and intelligence officials because they don't understand what the real problems are. — Aldrich Ames

It has been said that the United States was deceived into entering and expanding the Vietnam War by its own overoptimistic propaganda. The record suggests, however, that the policy-makers stayed in Vietnam not so much because of overly optimistic hopes of winning ... as because of overly pessimistic assessments of the consequences of losing. — Jonathan Schell

I think we're much more comfortable with women as policy makers.We're not there yet, but the comfort zone is much wider than it was when I came. — Patricia Schroeder

As this body of knowledge has evolved, a much more critical job for researchers and scientists has evolved into explaining and educating policy makers and the public to the risks of global warming and the possible consequences of action or of no action. — John Olver

In recent decades, "pluralism" has become something of a buzzword. It is variously employed. Often it is used to argue that no normative ethic, even of the vaguest and most tentative sort, can be "imposed" in our public life. In practice this means that public policy decisions reflect a surrender of the normal to the abnormal, of the dominant to the deviant. Indeed it is of more than passing interest that terms such as abnormal or deviant have been largely exorcised from polite vocabulary among the elites in American life. The displacement of the constitutive by the marginal is not so much the result of perverse decision makers as it is the inevitable consequence of a polity and legal system in which the advantage of initiative lies with the offended. — Richard John Neuhaus

If scientists could communicate more in their own voices - in a familiar tone, with a less specialized vocabulary - would a wide range of people understand them better? Would their work be better understood by the general public, policy-makers, funders, and, even in some cases, other scientists? — Alan Alda

Maybe U.S. policy makers should talk to taxi drivers. — Gloria Steinem

Public enthusiasm for new advances is a key ingredient in influencing policy-makers to stimulate follow-up work with suitable funding, and it can be achieved far faster now that interested non-specialists can explore new research autonomously and can also be appealed to directly by scientists. — Aubrey De Grey

I'm not a policy maker. I'm not even a very great activist. My main thing is to make things that speak for the culture that I live in. — Wangechi Mutu

Anyone who studies declassified documents soon becomes aware that government secrecy is largely an effort to protect policy makers from scrutiny by citizens, not to protect the country from enemies. — Noam Chomsky

The speed with which armies collapse, bureaucracies abdicate, and social structures dissolve once the autocrat is removed frequently surprises American Policy makers. — Jeane Kirkpatrick

Even before Sputnik, scientists and policy makers worried that not enough Americans were studying science. — Virginia Postrel

A Crime So Monstrous is a remarkably brave and unflinching piece of reportage and storytelling. Ben Skinner bears witness, sharing stories so unsettling, so neglected, so chilling they will leave you shaking with anger. This should be required reading for policy makers around the world - and, for that matter, anyone concerned about the human condition. — Alex Kotlowitz

American decision-makers must understand how damaging a foreign policy that privileges order and profit over justice really is in the long term. — Samantha Power

We want to bring enterprise back to blighted urban areas. People there have been told nothing is ever going to change. The policy makers may feel the same way. — Majora Carter

China is attempting the death-defying feat, which no one has attempted in the history of the world, which is to move a billion people out of poverty. When I speak to Chinese policy-makers, the thing that annoys them the most about Western policy-makers is that they're not given any credit for anything. — Dambisa Moyo

Somewhere in, I think, the back of the mind of some [education] policy makers is this idea that if we fine-tune it well enough, if we just get it right, it will all hum along perfectly into the future. It won't, and it never did. — Ken Robinson

In recent years, academics, policy-makers, and experts have raised the question of the applicability of peacetime environmental law in times of armed conflict. — Widad Akreyi

Policy-makers continue to discover that they cannot solve today's problems with yesterday's mindsets — Widad Akreyi

It is profoundly troubling when you have Supreme Court justices not following their judicial oath. And taking the role of policy makers and legislators, rather than being judges. — Ted Cruz

We need to ask our policy makers and those we elect to office who are supposed to make decisions to give us the evidence of the facts that are behind the decisions that we make. We should be skeptical. — Dixie Lee Ray

In the U.S. you have a system of lobbying and influence on our policy and law makers which is incredibly pronounced. The gas industry spent $250 million getting an exemption from our Safe Water Act. Every one of those dollars is toxic; a contaminant in our political system. It disrupts the normal flow of justice, science, fact and reporting. — Josh Fox

Policy makers still think that if we just hand out more money the world's problems will be solved. — Paul Weyrich

Policy is formed by preconceptions, by long implanted biases. When information is relayed to policy-makers, they respond in terms of what is already inside their heads and consequently make policy less to fit the facts than to fit the notions and intentions formed out of the mental baggage that has accumulated in their minds since childhood. — Barbara Tuchman

Most policy makers embrace a religious-like belief that the market can and should solve every problem. — Eric Maskin

If, in our haste to 'progress,' the economics of ecology are disregarded by citizens and policy makers alike, the result will be an ugly America. We cannot afford an America where expedience tramples upon esthetics and development decisions are made with an eye only on the present. — Stewart Udall

Another longstanding foreign policy flaw is the degree to which special interests dictate the way in which the "national interest" as a whole is defined and pursued ... America's important historic relationship with Israel has often led foreign policy decision-makers to defer reflexively to Israeli security assessments, and to replicate Israeli tactics, which, as the war in Lebanon last summer demonstrated, can turn out to be counter-productive. — Samantha Power

I see myself as more of a policy maker than a political leader. — Paul Ryan

the frame that has traditionally been used in the United States - miles per gallon - provides very poor guidance to the decisions of both individuals and policy makers. — Daniel Kahneman

Policy makers, like most people, normally feel that they already know all the psychology and all the sociology they are likely to need for their decisions. I don't think they are right, but that's the way it is. — Daniel Kahneman

Until the public demands otherwise, the policy makers will continue to serve their financiers. — James Hansen

Working with the media remains an effective and essential way to raise issues, educate the public, and prod policy-makers and corporate leaders to change for the better. — Chuck Schumer

The time is changing and not only the policy makers of India, but the whole world is realizing the importance of Ayurveda. Who could have thought some years back that people with up-bringing in cosmopolitan culture would prefer bottle gourd juice or gooseberry juice over carbonated soft-drinks in the near future. — Acharya Balkrishna

If we want to keep farmers in business, it's time for all of us, ordinary citizens and policy makers alike, to begin learning how that might be done. Sharing the Harvest is a great place to start. — Joan Dye Gussow

For policy makers interested in using tax policy to stimulate investments or especially to smooth business cycle fluctuations, the results are not promising. — Austan Goolsbee

Women are never again going to be mindless coffee-makers or mindless policy-makers in politics. — Gloria Steinem

The folly and hubris of the policy makers who heedlessly thrust the nation into an ill-defined and open-ended 'global war on terror' without the foggiest notion of what victory would look like, how it would be won, and what it might cost approached standards hitherto achieved only by slightly mad German warlords. — Andrew Bacevich

The key reason why we are richer than our ancestors is that these ancestors have bequeathed us buildings, factories and machines that have given us a high living standard to start with. Driven by irresponsible policy makers, America's present generation is consuming the nation's capital. — Kurt Richebacher

No one doing big business can avoid some contact with government agencies, regulators, and policy makers. — Mikhail Prokhorov

Fifty years ago, historians advised politicians and policy-makers. They helped chart the future of nations by helping leaders learn from past mistakes in history. But then something changed, and we began making decisions based on economic principles rather than historical ones. The results were catastrophic. — Annalee Newitz

Why do tyrants understand the dangers of a democratic imagination more than our policy makers appreciate its necessity? — Azar Nafisi

There is no substitute for science communication to the public and policy makers. — Lailah Gifty Akita

The United States inherited a seemingly inexhaustible fortune in natural resources, yet it has responded to its environment with a dismaying mixture of materialism and inertia. The nation was virtually founded upon a ubiquitous desire for access to land and its contents. Its amazing growth during the nineteenth century was based directly upon the exploitation - immediate, unplanned, full use of soils, minerals, forests, and rivers. Equitable access to these natural bounties rather than constitutional guarantees would be the practical basis for democracy. Subsequently, political institutions were shaped in such a way that they could facilitate the disposition of the public domain. But that expectation, as later generations ruefully observed, did not materialize. The combination of economics and government had instead produced a handful of owners and policy makers who were beyond the control of the ballot box. — Elmo Richardson

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

The IPCC 'policy summaries,' written by a small group of their political operatives, frequently contradict the work of the scientists that prepare the scientific assessments. Even worse, some of the wording in the science portions has been changed by policy makers after the scientists have approved the conclusions. — Peter Friedman

The conservative revolution that Reagan helped usher in gained traction because Reagan's central insight - that the liberal welfare state had grown complacent and overly bureaucratic, with Democratic policy makers more obsessed with slicing the economic pie than with growing the pie - contained a good deal of truth. — Barack Obama

Correlation between the growing lack of respect for ideas and the imagination and the increasing gap between rich and poor in America, reflected not just in the gulf between the salaries of CEOs and their employees but also in the high cost of education, the incredible divide between private and public schools that makes all of the fine speeches by our policy makers - most of whom send their children to private schools anyway, just as they enjoy the benefits and perks of their jobs as servants of the people - all the more insidious and insincere. — Azar Nafisi

At a time when the current and two former US presidents have admittedly indulged, as have politicians of all stripes from Al Gore to Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin and over 50% of the adult US population, the credibility tipping point of the War on Drugs propaganda has long been passed. All that appears to be missing is the political courage to admit failure and move on to more realistic and efficient policies. What will it take for decision makers to display the wisdom and garner the courage to end the disastrous War on Drugs and responsibly take charge of drug production and trade instead of leaving it in the hands of extremely dangerous and powerful international criminal organizations? — Jeffrey Dhywood

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

I think the policy makers like the idea of being the boss. I mean people who like to boss other people around like to go into politics so they can become the boss. — Ron Paul

For me, it's more about being there, bearing witness to history, bearing witness to what's happening, what our country, the position our country is taking overseas. I want policy-makers to see the fruits of their decisions, basically, and to try and influence foreign policy. — Lynsey Addario

When we talk about 'reproductive rights' this is what we mean. It's the difference between people as objects, and people as agents: between regarding people as pawns on the policy chessboard and recognizing them as the players, the decision-makers, the drivers of policy; autonomous individuals intimately concerned with the direction of their own lives. Under these conditions women, especially, enjoy better health and live fuller lives. — Nafis Sadik

The problem is the policy makers don't have practitioners in the policy team. You won't make an IT policy without consulting a Narayan Murthy or Nandan Nilekani. But for energy, people think they know everything and they know what to do for it. That's how the policies are created in Delhi and that needs to change. — Ramon Magsaysay

Politics are for the Washington, D.C., policy makers who safely watched the action on a video monitor from thousands of miles away. — Mark Owen

Will capitalist economies operate at full employment in the absence of routine intervention? Certainly not. Do policy makers have the knowledge and ability to improve macroeconomic outcomes rather than make matters worse? Yes. — Janet Yellen

I have so much respect for policy makers and diplomats, but I could never be a politician because of the way they dress! — Azita Ghanizada

A research division develops marketing material for its deal makers. We have no policy position. If you have a policy position you can't possibly forecast. — George Friedman

our irrationality happens the same way, again and again. Whether we are acting as consumers, businesspeople, or policy makers, understanding how we are predictably irrational provides a starting point for improving our decision making and changing the way we live for the better. — Dan Ariely

It urges policy makers and the Supreme Court to make the mistake of curing what could prove to be an isolated problem by disarming the government of its principal weapon to stop future terrorist attacks. — John Yoo

As a result of their own experience in a country with historical social mobility, American policy makers are often blind to deeply embedded social stratifications that characterize other societies. The only successful political revolution in the western hemisphere that also resulted in a social revolution was that of Fidel Castro's Cuba in 1959, a revolution that the United States spent the next fifty-plus years trying to contain or reverse. — Francis Fukuyama

And, what's worse, we didn't get where we are today thanks to policy makers - but thanks to the appetite for risks and errors of a certain class of people we need to encourage, protect, and respect. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb