Policy That Needs Quotes & Sayings

Foreign policy is effectively the assertion of many individual countries intersecting on the global marketplace. And you have to figure out how to get your interest served in a way that meets the interests and needs of these other folks. — John F. Kerry

What America needs is to hold to its ancient and well-charted course. Our country was conceived in the theory of local self-government. It has been dedicated by long practice to that wise and beneficent policy. It is the foundation principle of our system of liberty. It makes the largest promise to the freedom and development of the individual. Its preservation is worth all the effort and all the sacrifice that it may cost. — Calvin Coolidge

We need a new Latin American policy that is bold - different. We need to focus on building civil society, focus on the lack of infrastructure. We need look at ways to foster economic opportunity. There needs to be a more comprehensive economic vision in the region. — Mel Martinez

And that's why I wrote the book, because our country really needs to understand, if people in this nation understood what our foreign policy is really about, what foreign aid is about, how our corporations work, where our tax money goes, I know we will demand change. — John Perkins

I know the power of the Israeli lobby and the other lobbies, but we need a foreign policy that puts our own country first. — Pat Buchanan

To ensure that Singaporeans can take advantage of opportunities, the government should continue to monitor carefully the proportion of foreign students in our education institutions to ensure that the proportion matches the present and future needs of the country, and the Singaporeans are the main beneficiaries of our education policy. — Tony Tan

Investors don't like uncertainty. The market is telling us that they need certainty, they need to see where the economy is heading. If the government is committed to continue the Open Door policy, they will need to come up with concrete policies and execution steps to increase confidence. — Zhang Xin

Since you (US "drug tsar" McCaffrey) control a federal budget that has just been increased from $17.8 billion last year to $19.2 billion this year, is asking people like you if we should continue with our nation's current drug policy like a person asking a barber if one needs a haircut? — James P. Gray

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

By balancing the needs of families and employers, and by extending a safe haven to those fleeing persecution, our immigration policy serves its historic purpose. Freedom and opportunity is the cornerstone of American society, and immigrants continue to embody that freedom. — Spencer Abraham

How many cities of forty thousand, which is the population of Burlington, have a foreign policy? Well, we did. During my tenure as mayor we made the point that excessive spending on the military and unnecessary wars meant fewer resources to address the needs of ordinary people. Somewhere in the Reagan Library, or wherever these things are kept, there is a letter from the mayor of Burlington opposing the U.S. funding of contras in Nicaragua. The letter stated, "Stop the war against the people of Nicaragua. Use our tax dollars to feed the hungry and house the homeless. Stop killing the innocent people of Nicaragua." As — Bernie Sanders

In 1973, America imported 30 percent of its crude oil needs. Today, that number has doubled to more than 60 percent. Gas prices are as high as they are now in part because we've had no comprehensive national energy policy for the past few decades. — Gary Miller

What I was doing was servicing the needs of my constituents and I was not allowed to do that because I did not toe the line on U.S. policy for Israel. — Cynthia McKinney

There is a policy response that needs to occur. There is also a technical response that needs to occur. It is the development community that can really craft the solutions and make sure we are safe. — Edward Snowden

Governments will always play a huge part in solving big problems. They set public policy and are uniquely able to provide the resources to make sure solutions reach everyone who needs them. They also fund basic research, which is a crucial component of the innovation that improves life for everyone. — Bill Gates

We need American foreign policy that tells the world very clearly that it is bad to be our enemy and good to be our friend. — Marco Rubio

Every responsible chief in the CIA knows that the more covert the action, the greater the need for a clear policy and a defined target. — Tyler Drumheller

The one instrument that has relative political autonomy is monetary policy. Central banks do not need to go to Congress to get approval for an interest rate hike. — Mohamed El-Erian

Let's not build the policy around the abuse. That's not good policy. That's actually bad policy. Build the policy around the aspiration point. That's what we need to do when we're seeing abuse online. — Kamala Harris

The focus ought to be on the single fact that Hillary Clinton wants to double down on a failed foreign policy and we need to be united to defeat that because we're going to be in a place that is far less secure than it is today. — Jeb Bush

We need to be fearful of companies that get so big that they can actually be directing policy. — Rand Paul

The solution to our energy needs must go through a show of respect for nature, not, once again, a policy that does violence to our hills. — George Horace Lorimer

Though every legal task demands this skill, it is especially important in the effort to frame public policy in a way that is properly responsive to human needs and predicaments. The question is always: How will the general rule work in practice? — Elliot Richardson

Most promising of all is new work by a team of researchers at Stanford, led by Mark Jacobson (who coauthored the 2009 global plan). In March 2013, they published a study in Energy Policy showing that New York state could meet all of its power needs with renewables by 2030. Jacobson and his colleagues are developing similar plans for every U.S. state, and have already published numbers for the country as a whole. "It's absolutely not true that we need natural gas, coal or oil - we think it's a myth," he told The New York Times.22 — Naomi Klein

Our greatest foreign policy problem is our divisions at home. Our greatest foreign policy need is national cohesion and a return to the awareness that in foreign policy we are all engaged in a common national endeavor. — Henry A. Kissinger

It is easier to allow a few women to occupy positions of authority and dominance than to question whether social life should be organized around principles of hierarchy, control, and dominance at all, to allow a few women to reach the heights of the corporate hierarchy rather than question whether people's needs should depend on an economic system based on dominance, control, and competition. It is easier to allow women to practice law than to question adversarial conflict as a model for resolving disputes and achieving justice. It has even been easier to admit women to military combat roles than to question the acceptability of warfare and its attendant images of patriarchal masculine power and heroism as instruments of national policy. And it has been easier to elevate and applaud a few women than to confront the cultural misogyny that is never far off, waiting in the wings and available for anyone who wants to use it to bring women down and put them in their place. — Allan G. Johnson

Unless we understand what it is that leads to economic and financial instability, we cannot prescribe
make policy
to modify or eliminate it. Identifying a phenomenon is not enough; we need a theory that makes instability a normal result in our economy and gives us handles to control it. — Hyman Minsky

What, do you just wake up in the morning and say, 'I think I'll overtake a small country today,' or 'I wonder if there's a long-standing government policy that needs subverting? — Anna Scarlett

We need a much better understanding of the climate before making policy choices that would impose substantial economic costs on our Nation. — Ted Cruz

As an economic historian, I appreciate what manufacturing has contributed to the United States. It was the engine of growth that allowed us to win two world wars and provided millions of families with a ticket to the middle class. But public policy needs to go beyond sentiment and history. — Christina Romer

The right combination is between a free economy and social policy that addresses the needs of society and creates equal opportunity. — Benjamin Netanyahu

Reagan Declares
Firmness on Gulf;
Plans are Unclear
Isn't that classic? I don't mean the semicolon; I mean, isn't that just what the world needs? Unclear firmness! That is typical American policy: don't be clear, but be firm! — John Irving

The problem with much of the debate over this issue is that we confuse two separate matters: immigration policy (how many people we admit) and immigrant policy (how we treat people who are already here). What our nation needs is a pro-immigrant policy of low immigration. A pro-immigrant policy of low immigration can reconcile America's traditional welcome for newcomers with the troubling consequences of today's mass immigration. It would enable us to be faithful and wise stewards of America's interests while also showing immigrants the respect they deserve as future Americans. — Tom Tancredo

America needs a sensible, sustainable Iran policy that can meet U.S. security and economic interests, command international support and withstand the shifting Middle Eastern sands. — Samantha Power

I want to stress again that human rights are not peripheral to the foreign policy of the United States. Our pursuit of human rights is part of a broad effort to use our great power and our tremendous influence in the service of creating a better world, a world in which human beings can live in peace, in freedom, and with their basic needs adequately met. — Jimmy Carter

Can we reconcile indefinitely these two imperatives: the desire to preserve every individual's special identity and the need for Europeans to be able to communicate with one another all the time and as freely as possible? We cannot leave it to time to solve the dilemma and prevent people from engaging, a few years hence, in bitter and fruitless linguistic conflicts. We know all too well what time will do.
The only possible answer is a voluntary policy aimed at strengthening linguistic diversity and based on a simple idea: nowadays everybody obviously needs three languages. The first is his language of identity; the third is English. Between the two we have to promote a third language, freely chosen, which will often but not always be another European language. This will be for everyone the main foreign language taught at school, but it will also be much more than that
the language of the heart, the adopted language, the language you have married, the language you love. — Amin Maalouf

Opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling is bad public policy that has no place in the budget process,. The Budget Committee needs to leave drilling in the Arctic Refuge behind and focus on crafting this year's budget package. — Russ Feingold

Getting enough energy to satisfy the needs of the developing world without bringing on an eco-disaster is not going to be easy. It will require a marriage of science and technology with good international policy, something that is always hard to bring off. We need to get it right this time. — Burton Richter

But it could be that we, as early as spring, will need to embark on a new policy in order to save one of the cornerstones of European politics: personal freedom of movement. — Paolo Gentiloni

In a president, character is everything. A president doesn't have to be brilliant ... He doesn't have to be clever; you can hire clever ... You can hire pragmatic, and you can buy and bring in policy wonks. But you cant buy courage and decency, you cant rent a strong moral sense. A president must bring those things with him. He needs to have, in that much maligned word, but a good one nonetheless, a vision of the future he wishes to create.. But a vision is worth little if a president doesn't have the character - the courage and heart - to see it through. — Peggy Noonan

The US needs a cap and trade system with auctioning of licenses for emissions rights. The revenues from these auctions can be used to launch a new, environmentally friendly energy policy. That would be yet another federal program that could help us to overcome the stagnation. — George Soros

[beware that] many of what are called social problems are differences between the theories of intellectuals and the realities of the world - differences which many intellectuals interpret to mean that it is the real world that is wrong and needs changing. — Thomas Sowell

We [American nation] can now, by virtue of new technology, actually get all the energy we need in North America without having to go to the - the Arabs or the Venezuelans or anyone else. That's why my policy starts with a very robust policy to get all that energy in North America, become energy-secure. — Mitt Romney

Green policy is about triggering a shift to a cleaner way of doing things. To be effective, it needs to incentivise the right behaviour, for example through tax breaks, and that needs to be paid for by disincentives on polluting behaviour. — Zac Goldsmith

People would have a health care insurance policy they can call their own. They could choose one that exactly fits their families' needs and their budgets, be able to take that coverage with them from job to job and be able to fire their insurance company if it doesn't treat them well. — Andrew P. Harris

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

Despite the long-term reduction in familial roles and functions, we believe that parents are still the world's greatest experts about the needs of their own children. Virtually any private or public program that supports parents, effectively supports children. This principle of supporting family vitality seems to us preferable to any policy that would have the state provide children directly with what it thinks they need. — Kenneth Keniston

The dirty little secret is that both houses of Congress are irrelevant ... America's domestic policy is now being run by Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve, and America's foreign policy is now being run by the International Monetary Fund [IMF] ... when the president decides to go to war, he no longer needs a declaration of war from Congress. — Robert Reich

I don't know that I would need to be famous as a Middle East policy expert to see that unilateral imperialism is bad policy. — Janeane Garofalo

It should be needless to add that policy needs to be somewhat flexible and adaptive since war has a way of frustrating political intentions. It is a blunt instrument, and there are many reasons why cunning plans often go awry, not the least among which is the fact of an enemy with an independent will.
It would be difficult to overstate the significance of this maxim. Maxim 3 insists both that we never forget that war is about peace (see Maxim 2), and, more pointedly, that the making of peace is likely to be more difficult than the waging of war. It is a common, and somewhat understandable, error to assume that if one takes care of the fighting in an efficient manner, and the enemy is duly humbled, somehow the subsequent peace will all but take care of itself. Indeed, to go further, it is by no means unknown for professional soldiers to be less than fascinated by the political consequences of their military efforts. — Colin S. Gray

The corporation is not an independent "person" with its own rights, needs, and desires that regulators must respect. It is a state created tool for advancing social and economic policy. — Joel Bakan

I've found him to be a disappointment. Wonderful speech in Egypt, and good intentions aside, foreign policy needs to be firmly grounded in reality, and understanding of a sort of chaos theory ... [that is to say] it needs to be part good intention, part political intelligence, and part political savvy and knowledge of international interests and national burdens. President Obama has been extremely short-sighted in this sense, and if he fails, it will be a tragic blow for peaceniks and multilateralists the world over, and a manna from heaven for the Republican party. — Munir Butt

Somehow a U.N. resolution about Syria puts us where we need to be? I think it is a reflection of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's beliefs that our foreign policy gets set by others. — Carly Fiorina