National Interest Quotes

We must surely appear to the world as exactly what we are: a nation that organizes its economy around consuming twice as much oil as it produces, and around the profligate wastefulness of the wars and campaigns required to defend such consumption. In recent years we have defined our national interest largely in terms of the oil fields and pipelines we need to procure fuel. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

The Constitution was the expression not only of a political faith, but also of political fears. It was wrought both as the organ of the national interest and as the bulwark of certain individual and local rights. ~ Herbert Croly

Our system provides for a winner to take office on January 20th, and he is expected to take command of the ship of state. Failure to do so, characterized by hesitation and indecision, will harm the national interest. ~ Richard V. Allen

Party is a body of men united, for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest, upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed. ~ Edmund Burke

Too often, we restrict trade that would create U.S. jobs and is in our national interest. ~ Henry Paulson

The masters represent "the national interest," like those who applauded themselves for leading the country to war "after the utmost deliberation by the more thoughtful members of the community" had reached its "moral verdict. ~ Noam Chomsky

I wanted to put the national interest before my personal interests. ~ Michael Gove

Humans are by nature self-centered. It doesn't matter how civilized or primitive they are. If they want something, they'll find a way to get it or take it. The old empires used land, women, religion, pride in one's nationality, or preservation of their culture as an excuse to start war. Presently, you use technology, world policing, expanding markets, and protecting national interest, but the underlying theme has never changed. As long as there are greedy people in this world, there will always be wars. ~ Ednah Walters

I do here in the most solemn and bitter manner curse the Prime Minister of England for having cumulated all his other betrayals of the national interest and honour, by his last terrible exhibition of dishonour, weakness and gullibility. The depths of infamy which our accurst "love of peace" can lower us are unfathomable. ~ Enoch Powell

Some information is classified legitimately; as with military hardware, secrecy sometimes really is in the national interest. Further, military, political, and intelligence communities tend to value secrecy for its own sake. It's a way of silencing critics and evading responsibility - for incompetence or worse. It generates an elite, a band of brothers in whom the national confidence can be reliably vested, unlike the great mass of citizenry on whose behalf the information is presumably made secret in the first place. With a few exceptions, secrecy is deeply incompatible with democracy and with science. ~ Carl Sagan

The limitations imposed by democratic political practices makes it difficult to conduct our foreign affairs in the national interest. ~ Dean Acheson

We're taught to talk about the world as a world of as states conceived as unified, coherent entities. If you study international relations (IR) theory, there's what's called "realist" IR theory, which says there is an anarchic world of states and states pursue their "national interest." It's in large part mythology. There are a few common interests, like we don't want to be destroyed. But, for the most part, people within a nation have very different interests. The interests of the CEO of General Electric and the janitor who cleans his floor are not the same. ~ Noam Chomsky

Republican voters believe we should have a lawful system of immigration that serves the national interest. They don't believe we should enter into - commit the United States to further globalist policies that diminish the sovereignty and freedom of American to act in its own interest. ~ Jeff Sessions

Congress has the responsibility to ensure that any international trade agreement entered into by the United States must serve the national interest, not merely the interests of those crafting the proposal in secret. ~ Jeff Sessions

Fiction isn't bad. It is vital. Without commonly accepted stories about things like money, states or corporations, no complex human society can function. We can't play football unless everyone believes in the same made-up rules, and we can't enjoy the benefits of markets and courts without similar make-believe stories. But stories are just tools. They shouldn't become our goals or our yardsticks. When we forget that they are mere fiction, we lose touch with reality. Then we begin entire wars `to make a lot of money for the cooperation' or 'to protect the national interest'. Corporations, money and nations exist only in our imagination. We invented them to serve us; why do we find ourselves sacrificing our life in their service. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

A wartime Minister of Information is compelled, in the national interest, to such continuous acts of duplicity that even his natural hair must grow to resemble a wig. ~ Claud Cockburn

Legislators consistently put the political imperative before the national interest. ~ Doug Bandow

I certainly believe that improving our intelligence is of important national interest. ~ Jeff Sessions

The statesman must think in terms of the national interest, conceived as power among other powers. The popular mind, unaware of the fine distinctions of the statesman's thinking, reasons more often than not in the simple moralistic and legalistic terms of absolute good and absolute evil. ~ Hans Morgenthau

When the clowns of British politics - arch-Brexiteer cartoon characters 'Boorish Johnson' and 'JackOff Grease-Smug' advocate ad infinitum that Britain should leave the EU in order to be free to sign her own trade deals; they seem to have overlooked the towering elephant in the room, namely the current occupant of the White House (another clown) - who appears hell-bent on destabilising world trade via crude protectionist policies. Both Tories, despite receiving the best British education money can buy, would do well to revisit their post war history books and be reminded of one of the key objectives of the European Project and in due course the European Union - specifically to promote peace and prosperity amongst previously warring neighbours by forming a unified trading bloc which in time, due to its effective size, also acted as a useful counterweight to US hegemony. Go find another circus for your buffoonery and leave the deadly serious business of politics to principled individuals with the true national interest at heart ! ~ Alex Morritt

Finally we are a nation with some conscience. It means alliances are extremely important when they're based on a national interest. We have to have the ability to sustain our presence within those alliances. ~ Malcolm Wallop

I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest. ~ Winston S. Churchill

They [American forces] are there as an expression of the American national interest to prevent the Iranian combination of imperialism and fundamentalist ideology from dominating a region on which the energy supplies of the industrial democracies depend. ~ Henry A. Kissinger

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi invited me to breakfast on the eighteenth. Five days before, she had issued a news release saying, "The president's strategy in Iraq has failed," and "The choice is between a Democratic plan for responsible redeployment and the president's plan for an endless war in Iraq." With those comments as backdrop, at the breakfast I urged her to pass the defense appropriations bill before October and to pass the War Supplemental in total, not to mete it out a few weeks or months at a time. I reminded her that the president had approved Petraeus's recommendation for a change of mission in December and told her that Petraeus and Crocker had recommended a sustainable path forward that deserved broad bipartisan support. She politely made clear she wasn't interested. I wasn't surprised. After all, one wouldn't want facts and reality - not to mention the national interest - to intrude upon partisan politics, would one? ~ Robert M. Gates

Mitt Romney's only bottom line is the one at the end of his own bank statement. The problem is that he confuses his own narrow, self-interest - and that of people like him - with the national interest. He thinks as long as we do right by the Mitt Romneys of the world, America will be just fine. ~ Chuck Schumer

We pay a price when special interests win out over the collective national interest. ~ Chris Christie

What are called opinions "on the left" and "on the right" in the media represent only a limited spectrum of debate, which reflects the range of needs of private power - but there's essentially nothing beyond those "acceptable" positions. So what the media do, in effect, is to take the set of assumptions which express the basic ideas of the propaganda system, whether about the Cold War or the economic system or the "national interest" and so on, and then present a range of debate within that framework - so the debate only enhances the strength of the assumptions, ingraining them in people's minds as the entire possible spectrum of opinion that there is. ~ Noam Chomsky

After everyone has had a chance to bluster, posture, and pontificate, we are left with one basic question: under any foreseeable circumstance, would it be in our national interest to default on our debt? The answer is unequivocally no. ~ John Sununu

Hindu fundamentalism is a contradiction in terms, since Hinduism is a religion without fundamentals; there is no such thing as a Hindu heresy. How dare a bunch of goondas shrink the soaring majesty of the Vedas and the Upanishads to the petty bigotry of their brand of identity politics? ~ Shashi Tharoor

His mind filled with visions of a decadent kleptocracy in rapid decline, abetted by both political parties. America's masses, fed on processed poison bought with a food stamp swipe card. Low-skill workers, structurally unable to ever contribute again and too dumb to know their old jobs weren't coming back. The banks in Gotham leaching the last drops of wealth out of the country. Corporations unrestrained by any notion of national interest. The system of property law in shambles. The world drowning in debt. ~ George Packer

Tackling deprivation around the world is a moral imperative and firmly in Britain's national interest. ~ Andrew Mitchell

I will not stand idly when anyone gets in the way of the national interest and tries to block the national vision. From where I sit, I can tell you, a president is always as strong as she wants to be. ~ Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo

I dare say that a majority of the American people think that having a fair hearing on an issue of importance in our relations with Mexico is extremely important to our national interest, as well as theirs. ~ William Weld

We shouldn't be thinking about individuals or departments. We should be thinking about national interest. Lifting the standard of Pakistan squash is like working towards national interest. ~ Jahangir Khan

The land of opportunity", "The American dream", "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness": these are the sounds of the great sucking mechanism of the American parasite. The reliance of seduction and persuasion over coercion that sold democracy to the American people eventually sold it to the rest of the world. Although there are a minority of examples of the direct parasitism of involuntary immigration, especially slaves from Africa and the "legal" incorporation of Native Americans, voluntary immigration through the lure of freedom and and equality is only a more indirect form of parasitic predation. What is voluntary can be no less predatory than coercion, just as capitalism can be no less predatory than military imperialism. From the point of view of competition among nations, the point is not whether a citizen or their ancestor originally arrived voluntarily or involuntarily, but whether a nation or ideology is successful in harnessing its human resources towards its national interest or way of life. American parasitism works because it offers the secular Judaism of liberalism rather than the secular Christianity of communism. Communism could never compete with the immigrant American hope that they themselves might one day be a filthy rich capitalist. ~ Mitchell Heisman

Here are centered the hopes and aspirations and faith of the entire human race. I do not stand here as advocate for any partisan cause, for the issues are fundamental and reach quite beyond the realm of partisan consideration. They must be resolved on the highest plane of national interest if our course is to prove sound and our future protected. I trust, therefore, that you will do me the justice of receiving that which I have to say as solely expressing the considered viewpoint of a fellow American. ~ Douglas MacArthur

I'm oftentimes asked, What difference does it make to America if people are dying of malaria in a place like Ghana? It means a lot. It means a lot morally, it means a lot from a
it's in our national interest. ~ George W. Bush

At a certain level, credible deterrence depends on a credible enemy. The Soviet Union disintegrated, but the surviving superpower's instinct to de-escalate intensified: In Kirkuk as in Kandahar, every Lilliputian warlord quickly grasped that you could provoke the infidel Gulliver with relative impunity. Mutually assured destruction had curdled into Massively Applied Desultoriness.

Clearly, if one nation is responsible for near half the world's military budget, a lot of others aren't pulling their weight. The Pentagon outspends the Chinese, British, French, Russian, Japanese, German, Saudi, Indian, Italian, South Korean, Brazilian, Canadian, Australian, Spanish, Turkish, and Israeli militaries combined. So why doesn't it feel like that?

Well, for exactly that reason: If you outspend every serious rival combined, you're obviously something other than the soldiery of a conventional nation state. But what exactly? The geopolitical sugar daddy is so busy picking up the tab for the global order he's lost all sense of national interest. ~ Mark Steyn

The national interest is predetermined by geopolitics or the history of a country. Important political leaders never just followed their interests - they were concerned about the interests of their people. ~ Joseph Nye

The problem we have had on the budget all along is a lack of adult supervision on the part of the White House. You can't blame members of Congress for looking out for their parochial interests. It is the president's responsibility to look out for the national interest. ~ Bruce Bartlett

You have, at the same time, placed your confidence in me, and in my ability to render a free, fair judgment
to uphold the Constitution and my oath of office
and to reject any kind of religious pressure or obligation that might directly or indirectly interfere with my conduct of the Presidency in the national interest. ~ John F. Kennedy

Our foreign policy needs to support our energy, economic, defense and domestic policies. It all falls within the arch of national interest. There will be windows of opportunity, but they will open and close quickly. ~ Chuck Hagel

He was harassed, but still he spoke with authority. He was, in fact, characteristic of the best type of dominant male in the world at this time. He was fifty-five years old, tough, shrewd, unburdened by the complicated ethical ambiguities which puzzle intellectuals, and had long ago decided that the world was a mean son-of-a-bitch in which only the most cunning and ruthless can survive. He was also as kind as was possible for one holding that ultra-Darwinian philosophy; and he genuinely loved children and dogs, unless they were on the site of something that had to be bombed in the National Interest. He still retained some sense of humor, despite the burdens of his almost godly office, and, although he had been impotent with his wife for nearly ten years now, he generally achieved orgasm in the mouth of a skilled prostitute within 1.5 minutes. He took amphetamine pep pills to keep going on his grueling twenty-hour day, with the result that his vision of the world was somewhat skewed in a paranoid direction, and he took tranquilizers to keep from worrying too much, with the result that his detachment sometimes bordered on the schizophrenic; but most of the time his innate shrewdness gave him a fingernail grip on reality. ~ Robert Anton Wilson

For German Social Democracy, Europe is vital to the national interest. ~ Martin Schulz

The Democratic Party had failed (in 1983)
'to remember waht got us this far and how we got here
moral indignation, decent instincts, a sense of shared sacrifice and mutual responsibility, and a set of national priorities that emphasized what we had in common.. The Party that was the engine of the national interest
molding our pluralistic interest into a compelling new social contract that served the nation well for fifty years
became perceived as little more than the broker of narrow special interests. Instead of thinking of ourselves as Americans first, Democrats second, and members of interest groups third, we have begun to think in terms of special interests first and the greater interest second.. We have let our opponents set the agenda and define what is at stake.
p. 140 ~ Joe Biden

A president is supposed to calm the American people with sober decision-making in the national interest. ~ Monica Crowley

The Press will not be free to tell lies. That is not freedom for the people, but a tyranny over their minds and souls. Much humbug is talked on this subject. What is press freedom? In practice it means the right of a dew millionaires to corner newspaper shares on the stock exchange and to voice their own opinions and interests, irrespective of the truth or of the national interest. ~ Oswald Mosley

What governments and people don't realise is that sometimes the collective interest - the international interest - is also the national interest. ~ Kofi Annan

Idealism that makes no distinction between areas where our national interest lies and those from which it is remote does no good for America. The weariness of the post-Versailles, post-Korea, post-Vietnam eras is never far from the national mood. ~ Dick Morris

What remains constant for me, during the last 15 years, has been the conviction that the cold war was a calamity for the entire world, and that it can be justified by no consideration of theory, nor by any supposed national interest. ~ Earl Browder

It is also only in humans that aggression may be used to commit crimes, to enslave others or compel acquiescence to religious or ideological doctrine, or to pursue wars of national interest. At the individual level, men are universally more aggressive than women, and rates of aggressive confrontation are greatest among those who are young, poor, or unmarried. Cultural factors moderate human aggression as well, with men's heightened sensitivity to signs of disrespect, challenge, or threat spawning a high frequency of confrontational violence in so-called "cultures of honor". ~ Randy J. Nelson

The national interest cannot be defined as a common interest of the industrial, commercial, and financial companies of a country, because there is no such common interest; nor can it be defined as the life, liberty, and well-being of the citizens, because they are continually being adjured to sacrifice their well-being, their liberty, and their lives to the national interest. In the end a study of modern history leads to the conclusion that the national interest of every State consists in its capacity to make war. ~ Simone Weil

Governments do not necessarily act in the national interest, especially when making detailed microeconomic interventions. Instead, they are influenced by interest group pressures. The kinds of interventions that new trade theory suggests can raise national income will typically raise the welfare of small, fortunate groups by large amounts, while imposing costs on larger, more diffuse groups. ~ Paul Krugman

We do foreign assistance for altruistic reasons, certainly for humanitarian reasons, of course. But the main reason we do foreign assistance is we do it in the American national interest. ~ Roger Wicker

Monopolizing the right to speak authoritatively about "security" in name of everyone - the ability to evoke the "national interest" or a universal "we" - is at the crux of the practice of power. ~ Gearoid O Tuathail

The history and national interest of Rwanda and the Rwandan people dictate our national orientation. ~ Paul Kagame

We need to review the process for the election of Speaker. We've got to reform Question Time, which is really a waste of time. There are so many things that we need to do to reform our Parliament and I think it's bigger than that. It's all about the sort of leadership that people are getting at the moment. They're fed up with this sorta day-to-day bickering, not putting the national interest ahead of these narrow partisan interests. ~ Richard Di Natale

Is it in our national interest to overheat the planet? That's the question Obama faces in deciding whether to approve Keystone XL, a 2,000-mile-long pipeline that will bring 500,000 barrels of tar-sand oil from Canada to oil refineries on the Gulf of Mexico. ~ Jeff Goodell

For the past 15 years or so, British governments have tried to persuade the rest of us that the best judges of the national interest are ... businessmen. This may be a ridiculous statement, but
ominously
fewer and fewer people laugh at it. ~ Neal Ascherson

Politics is the art of making your selfish desires seem like the national interest. ~ Thomas Sowell

Newspapers can make their own judgment in terms of who they support in a general election. Our responsibility is to make a considered judgment about where the national interest lies. ~ Douglas Alexander

Real government is about looking beyond the vested to the national interest, setting up the necessary conditions to enable the next, more enabled and more empowered generation to achieve a country as prosperous, a people as content, as ours deserve to be. ~ Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo

I would dodge, not lie, in the national interest. ~ Larry Speakes

I am not posing these questions only to the world at large. I query us who own Christ as our life. Can God be pleased by the vast and increasing inequities among us? Is he not grieved by our arrogant accumulation, while Christian brothers and sisters elsewhere languish and die? Is it not obligatory upon us to see beyond the nose of our own national interest, so that justice may roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream? Is there not an obligation upon us to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God is we want to live in his wonderful peace? ~ Richard J. Foster

Israel is the historical definition of the specific nature of the religious consciousness, save only that here this consciousness was circumscribed by the limits of a particular, national interest. Hence, we need only let these limits fall, and we have the Christian religion. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach

People in Parliament occupy themselves with private animosities and petty quarrels, and think little of the national interest. It is impossible to credit the serene indifference with which they consider events outside their own country. ~ William III Of England

I believe something very deeply. That Britain's national interest is best served in a flexible, adaptable and open European Union and that such a European Union is best with Britain in it. ~ David Cameron

It's time to put the national interest before the interests of Wall Street. ~ Martin O'Malley

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

In some cases, in order to protect global issues some sacrifice for national interest is worth it in the long run. Global warming, these things, they suffer everybody. ~ Dalai Lama

Fundamental questions are being asked about the future of the Eurozone and therefore the shape of the EU itself. Opportunities to advance our national interest are clearly becoming apparent. We should focus on how to make the most of this, not pursue a parliamentary process for a multiple choice referendum. ~ David Cameron

It is both a right and a responsibility of a democratic society to manage immigration so that it serves the national interest. ~ Barbara Jordan

The child learns more of the virtues needed in modern life-of fairness, of justice, of comradeship, of collective interest and action-in a common school than can be taught in the most perfect family circle ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman

There is no one there to see it. The world is doing what it always does, demonstrating itself to itself. The world has no interest in the little figures that come and go, the phantoms that worry and worship, that rake the graveled paths and erect the occasional rock garden, the bronze boy-man, the hammered cup for snow to fall into. ~ Michael Cunningham

Mark you, if you give up spirituality, leaving it aside to go after the materializing civilization of the West, the result will be that in three generations you will be an extinct race; because the backbone of the nation will be broken, the foundation upon which the national edifice has been built will be undermined, and the result will be annihilation all round. ~ Swami Vivekananda

True peace must be anchored in justice and an unwavering commitment to universal rights for all humans, regardless of ethnicity, religion, gender, national origin or any other identity attribute. ~ Desmond Tutu

National culture and national self-expression tend to be self-serving and mythologising (all the more acutely so, perhaps, if foreigners proof even better at mythologising than the locals and drive the locals on to ever-greater feats of self-deception). National culture, by definition, is mythologising, self-serving and at the same time, self-mutilating, designed as it is to focus a group identity by creating shibboleths and stereotypes. ~ Peter Wollen

Romney is a classic case of re-invention. As governor of Massachusetts, he supported government-sponsored healthcare, was sympathetic to gay rights, and opposed harsh restrictions on abortion. After measuring the difference between the Massachusetts electorate and the national one to which he must now appeal, he has reversed those positions. ~ Stephen Kinzer

David Lynch is very important to me, and he does dreamlike movies, but my dreams are not like David Lynch's dreams. I have no interest in copying anybody's work. It would never occur to me to want this to look like someone else's thing. ~ Charlie Kaufman

Nixon did not anticipate the extent to which Kissinger, whom he barely knew when he appointed him national-security adviser in 1969, would be envious and high-strung - a maintenance project of the first order. ~ Robert Dallek

Their national muskets in a most explosive state of readiness, who stopped all comers and goers, ~ Charles Dickens

Who owns the assets of our Nation? Increasingly, foreign interests own our assets, and we owe them money. No wonder people think our country is headed in the wrong direction. It is. ~ Marcy Kaptur

The pictures were designed to soothe without arousing interest – engravings of cows in ponds, deer in streams, dogs in lakes. Wet animals seem to serve some human need. ~ John Steinbeck

The essence of government is concern for the widest possible public interest; the essence of the humanities, it seems to me, is private study, thought, and passion. Publicity is a essential to the one as privacy is to the other. ~ John Updike

God always rewards openly what was done in the secret. ~ Sunday Adelaja

If all our political and intellectual elite offers by way of a national culture is "pop music, gambling, fashionable clothes or television," then we can neither mount a convincing intellectual defense against our enemies, nor hope to integrate intelligent, inquiring, and unfulfilled Muslim youths young men principally, of course to our way of life. ~ Anthony Daniels

And it's Johnson, Johnson with the Quaffle, what a player that girl is, I've been saying it for years but she still won't go out with me - '
'JORDAN!' yelled Professor McGonagall.
'Just a fun fact, Professor, adds a bit of interest - ~ J.K. Rowling

Teachers are the architects of a Nation. They build characters, construct personalities and strengthen spirits in learners who become National Assets of tomorrow. ~ Kavita Bhupta Ghosh

I believe in the Constitution. I believe in separation of powers. I believe in the rule of law. I believe in limited government. And these are principles and policies that apparently neither the national Republican nor the national Democrat Party believes in. I believe great damage is being done to our Constitution, and I see no remedy at all, no likelihood of that changing, if we rely on the two parties to field our candidates for national office. ~ Bob Barr

Once I picked up an electric guitar, I lost interest in piano, and I just wanted to rock. I studied piano for so long, I got burned out on it. ~ Juliana Hatfield

Some Americans appear to believe that there would be no arts in America were it not for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), an institution created in 1965. They cannot imagine things being done any other way, even though they were done another way throughout our country's existence, and throughout most of mankind's history. While the government requested $121 million for the NEA in 2006, private donations to the arts totaled $2.5 billion that year, dwarfing the NEA budget. The NEA represents a tiny fraction of all arts funding, a fact few Americans realize. Freedom works after all. And that money is almost certainly better spent than government money: NEA funds go not necessarily to the best artists, but to people who happen to be good at filling out government grant applications. I have my doubts that the same people populate both categories. ~ Ron Paul

Eventually I lost interest in trying to control my life, to make things happen in a way that I thought I wanted them to be. I began to practice surrendering to the universe and finding out what "it" wanted me to do. ~ Shakti Gawain

There's a huge difference between a student whose objective is to get a good grade and a student whose objective is to solve a problem or understand a story. What's more, the research suggests that when kids are encouraged to focus on getting better marks in school, three things tend to happen: They lose interest in the learning itself, they try to avoid tasks that are challenging, and they're less likely to think deeply and critically. ~ Alfie Kohn

How can there ever possibly be a conflict between my private interests and the public good? ~ Ashleigh Brilliant

I believe being a good senator requires two things. Number one, acumen. Number two, interest. ~ Trey Gowdy

Until that moment, Canada had been a secular and progressive nation that believed in transfer payments to better distribute the country's wealth, the Westminster model of governance, a national medicare program, a peacekeeping role for the armed forces, an arm's-length public service, the separation of church and state, and solid support for the United Nations. Stephen Harper believed in none of these things. ~ Michael Harris

Bazaar shoppers who wear dark glasses in order to hide their level of interest from merchants. ~ Daniel Kahneman

Peace is a national issue, not only government's responsibility. ~ Ashraf Ghani

Oddly enough, the only person likely to be an ideal victim of complete manipulation is the President of the United States. Because of the immensity of his job, he must surround himself with advisers, the "National Security Managers", as they have been recently called by Richard Barnet, who "exercise their power chiefly by filtering the information that reaches the President and interpreting the outside world for him". ~ Hannah Arendt

There's no more place in the euro zone for well-meaning laxness when dealing with deficits and failings. If the demands on Greece aren't taken seriously, we'll get stuck in quicksand. In the worst case, this would make it acceptable for one tranche to not be paid out. It is in the Greeks own interest not to test that. ~ Peer Steinbruck