Open Government Quotes

I will run an open government that speaks with honesty, seeks opinion, listens to its citizens. ~ Enrique Pena Nieto

[The Internet] affects democracy ... As more and more citizens express what they think, and defend it in writing, that will change the way people understand public issues. It is easy to be wrong and misguided in your head. It is harder when the product of your mind can be criticized by others. Of course, it is a rare human who admits that he has been persuaded that he is wrong. But it is even rarer for a human to ignore when he has been proven wrong. The writing of ideas, arguments, and criticism improves democracy. ~ Lawrence Lessig

The universities have got a job here as well in making sure that people actually understand that we're open for university students coming into the U.K. There's a job here not just for the government, I think there's a job for the universities as well to make sure that people know that we are open. ~ Theresa May

A great number of those working for liberal causes are not only shy but borderline collusive. They want change to happen nicely, and it won't. They want decency to come about without anybody suffering or being embarrassed, and it won't. And most of all they want to give many of the enemies of open government the benefit of the doubt, and I don't. It's not just a difference of approach, it's a complete schism in our respective philosophy. You can't go about disclosure in the hope that it won't spoil anybody's dinner. ~ Julian Assange

In the governments, as we've witnessed in the past, they had to hide. Because there's a lot of concentration on the friends-and-family club ... We're not about that. That's not the government of the future of the State of New York. What's gonna pull this state out of the doldrums that it's in right now is an honest and open government. ~ Carl Paladino

230Our Internet debates ... tend to be dominated by a form of openness fundamentalism, whereby "openness" is seen as a fail-safe solution to virtually any problem. Instead of debating how openness may be fostering of harming innovation, promoting or demoting justice, facilitating or complicating deliberation - the kinds of debates we are likely to have about the uses of openness in the messy world that we live in - "openness" in networks and technological systems is presumed to be always good and its opposite ... is always bad. ~ Evgeny Morozov

Government is all show when it isn't murder in the dark ... or soldiers in the open. ~ Orson Scott Card

I didn't have a perfect model, but I wanted to try to blend my own personal reflections and experiences with this broader canvas to see how a lot of the narratives we have about economy and foreign policy got stuck. Because we have these categories of liberal, conservative, free marketer, open government - all these stereotypes about our politics and the categories we try to put things in are inadequate to this sort of complex, ambiguous, sometimes contradictory experience we have as ordinary people and that I have as an elected official. ~ Barack Obama

The aim of open government is to take advantage of the know-how and entrepreneurial spirit of those outside government institutions to work together with those inside government to solve problems. ~ Beth Simone Noveck

Noticing the disturbing similarity between the rhetoric surrounding "open government" and new public management, government expert Just Longo speculates that the former might be just a Trojan horse for the latter; in our excitement about the immense potential of new technologies to promote openness and transparency, we may have lost sight of the deeply political nature of the uses to which these technologies are put...

In India, recent digitization of land records and their subsequent publication online, while nominally an effort to empower the weak, may have actually empowered the rich and powerful. Once the digitized records were available for the whole world to see, some enterprising businessmen discovered that many poor families had no documents to prove ownership of land. In most cases, this was not the result of some nefarious land grab; local culture, with its predominantly oral ways of doing business, pervasive corruption, and poor literacy, partly explains why no such records exist...

The point here, as with most open-government schemes, is not that information shouldn't be collected or distributed; rather, it needs to be collected and distributed in full awareness of the social and cultural complexity of the institutional environment in which it is gathered. ~ Evgeny Morozov

University of California students can look forward to the same authoritarian management style Secretary Napolitano brought to the Department of Homeland Security, hardly a bastion of free speech and open government. ~ Doug LaMalfa

Diplomacy is, perhaps, one element of the U.S. government that should not be subject to the demands of 'open government'; whenever it works, it is usually because it is done behind closed doors. But this may be increasingly hard to achieve in the age of Twittering bureaucrats. ~ Evgeny Morozov

I am pleased to report that Texas is known for having one of the strongest set of open government laws in our Nation. And ever since that experience, I have long believed that our federal government could use 'a little Texas sunshine.' ~ John Cornyn

I believe in open government. I've always believed in open government. I don't e-mail, however. And there's a reason: I don't want you reading my personal stuff. ~ George W. Bush

What, pray, can be more sacred than this sacred mystery? What can be more delightful than the pleasure found therein? What food, what honey can be sweeter than to learn of God's wise plan, to enter into His sanctuary and gaze on the mind of the Creator, and to rehearse the words of your Lord, which, though derided by the wise of this world, are really full of spiritual wisdom! Let the others, if they will, have their wealth, and drink from jewelled cups, be clad in silk, and bask in popular applause, as if they could not exhaust their riches in all kinds of pleasures. Our delight shall be to meditate on the Law of the Lord day and night, to knock at His door when it is not open, to receive the bread of the Trinity, and, with our Lord going before us, to walk on the billows of the world. ~ Jerome

Every time that we try to lift a problem from our own shoulders, and shift that problem to the hands of the government, to the same extent we are sacrificing the liberties of our people. ~ John F. Kennedy

Technology has enabled government to have investigative and situational awareness on a scale and scope that were science fiction when the Stasi shut its doors. ~ Yochai Benkler

You don't want to return to the life you had before Stanford, and you don't know if you can remain in this life any longer, but fear should never be the reason why you change. If you're only here because you're afraid of the old way of life, you'll never pay attention and open your soul to learn about the new way. You'll be too busy looking back over your shoulder to make sure the old life isn't creeping up on you. ~ Anais Torres

To me, the process of writing is just reading what I've written and - like running your hand over one of those mod glass stovetops to find where the heat is - looking for where the energy is in the prose, then going in the direction of that. It's an exercise in being open to whatever is there. ~ George Saunders

My favourite festival experience is a show at midnight with the moon blazing and a crowd full of open hearts ready to dance. ~ Lykke Li

Answer me something. This life, where you get to meet people and know them, and become friends, and then in a few days or a few weeks, either they leave or you do...is it worth it? I am not sure. I think so. Maybe having your heart broken like that is what keeps it open. ~ James Maskalyk

There was a black sedan with tinted windows at the end of the lot--the windows cracked down enough for her to see two sunglassed agents of a vague yet menacing government agency watching her intently. One of them had a camera that kept going off, but the agent didn't seem to know how to deactivate the flash. The light against the tinted windows made the shots worthless, and the agent cursed and tried again and it flashed again. Jackie waved good night to them, as she always did. ~ Joseph Fink

Sometimes fate or life or whatever you want to call it, leaves a door a little open and you walk through it. But sometimes it locks the door and you have to find the key, or pick the lock, or knock the damn thing down. And sometimes, it doesn't even show you the door, and you have to build it yourself. But if you keep waiting for the doors to be opened for you ... I think you'll have a hard time finding single happiness, let alone that double portion. ~ Gayle Forman

I did my best to pretend it wasn't so ... I didn't have time to be ill.
Now I know you can't run away by ignoring the truth. Truth follows you; it comes in through open windows and drifts under doors. ~ Alice Hoffman

In Gladstone's mature years he lost faith not in God but in the ability of any government or state to act as the agent of God. ~ George F. Will

Maybe a better illustration would be a migraine. One moment you're well, the next you're in so much pain you can't open your eyes. Everything is changed. Nothing exists except the throb and fret between your temples, though underneath it all you're still perfectly healthy. ~ Kylie Ladd

And now I've got to explain the smell that was in there before I went in there. Does that ever happen to you? It's not your fault. You've held your breath, you just wanna get out, and now you open the door and you have to explain, 'Oh! Listen, there's an odor in there and I didn't do it. It's bad. ~ Ellen DeGeneres

See, I always forget this about you," he says, and even now, long after we first lost our privacy, I can't help wondering who's overhearing him. "Every decade, you like to pin me to the ground, pull open my mouth, and take a sh** right into it. ~ Curtis Sittenfeld

And remember, sometimes our dreams appear where and when we least expect it. Sometimes, just sometimes, you can even find them waiting in your own bed when you open your eyes. (Esther) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

There are many secret doors around us, in plain sight. We just don't take the time to find and open them. ~ Rebecca Ross

The opposite of Nazi is neither Republican nor Democrat, conservative or liberal. Totalitarianism's diametric opposite of is Libertarianism. ~ A.E. Samaan

We are all born with an open heart, but at some point as we are growing up, things happen in our lives where we start to shut down, like rejection, not fitting in, wanting approval, judgments, comparisons, and criticism of others. ~ Agapi Stassinopoulos

I am willing to take life as a game of chess in which the first rules are not open to discussion. No one asks why the knight is allowed his eccentric hop, why the castle may only go straight and the bishop obliquely. These things are to be accepted, and with these rule the game must be played: it is foolish to complain of them. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

Discover the inner beauty and wonder within your heart. When you open then follow your Heart your life will become truly wonderful. ~ Steven Redhead

And preserving our open spaces or having them there for recreational purposes is one of the things that contributes to the high level of quality of life that we offer in Pennsylvania, and that also translates into economic benefits. ~ Ed Rendell

There is something special about being in the presence of a person who is genuinely humble. Practicing humility shows that you respect others and reminds us that there is so much for us yet to learn. It sends a signal to those around you that you are open to receiving the gift of their knowledge and listening to what they have to say. The more you are as a person, the less you need to prove yourself to others. ~ Robin S. Sharma

Open the windows and the doors, she shouted, cook some meat and fish, buy the largest turtles around, let strangers come in and spread their mats in the corners and urinate in the rose bushes and sit down to eat as many times as they want, and belch and rant and muddy everything with their boots, and let them do whatever they want to us, because that's the only way to drive off ruin. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

With the open eyes, the arms dealers are, indeed, international criminals, who deliberately sell the weapons for killing the innocent people. Where stands the justice? ~ Ehsan Sehgal

It is time to put policy ahead of politics and success ahead of the status quo. It is time for a new strategy to produce what we need: a stable Iraq government that takes over for its own people so our troops can finish their job. ~ Hillary Clinton

It was nothing but a hole, a mouth open wide. You could lean over the edge and peer down to see nothing. All I knew about the well was its frightening depth. It was deep beyond measuring, and crammed full of darkness, as if all the world's darkness had been boiled down to their ultimate density. ~ Haruki Murakami

Every piece of wood in your house - from the windowsills to the furniture to the rafters - was once part of a living being, thriving in the open and pulsing with sap. If you look at these wooden objects across the grain, you might be able to trace out the boundaries of a couple of rings. The delicate shape of those lines tells you the story of a couple of years. If you know how to listen, each ring describes how the rain fell and the wind blew and the sun appeared every day at dawn. ~ Hope Jahren

The mechanism that directs government cannot be virtuous, because it is impossible to thwart every crime, to protect oneself from every criminal without being criminal too; that which directs corrupt mankind must be corrupt itself; and it will never be by means of virtue, virtue being inert and passive, that you will maintain control over vice, which is ever active: the governor must be more energetic than the governed. ~ Marquis De Sade

Just take Germany and the suffering of Jews during and after the Second World War. It would be legal to ridicule and to laugh at this suffering, but since it was such a trauma on the European conscience, no one is going to do it. It is an open scar, an open wound, an open reality. ~ Tariq Ramadan

Gregori tugged on her hair to force her back to him. "You make me feel alive, Savannah."
"Do I? Is that why you're swearing?" She turned onto her stomach, propping herself up onto her elbows.
He leaned into her, brushing his mouth across the swell of her breast. "You are managing to tie me up in knots. You take away all my good judgement."
A slight smile curved her mouth. "I never noticed that you had particularly good judgement to begin with."
His white teeth gleamed, a predator's smile, then sank into soft bare flesh. She yelped but moved closer to him when his tongue swirled and caressed, taking away the sting. "I have always had good judgement," he told her firmly, his teeth scraping back and forth in the valley between her breasts.
"So you say.But that doesn't make it so. You let evil idiots shoot you with poisoned darts. You go by yourself into laboratories filled with your enemies. Need I go on?" Her blue eyes were laughing at him.
Her firm, rounded bottom was far too tempting to resist. He brought his open palm down in mock punishment. Savannah jumped, but before she could scoot away, his palm began caressing, producing a far different effect. "Judging from our positions, ma petite, I would say my judgement looks better than yours."
She laughed. "All right,I'm going to let you win this time."
"Would you care for a shower?" he asked solicitously.
When she nodded, Gregori flowed off the bed, lifted her high into his arms,and ~ Christine Feehan

We are all used to paying a sales tax when we buy things - almost 9 percent here in New York City. The application of this concept to the financial sector could solve our need for revenue, bring some sanity back into the financial sector, and give us a way to raise the revenue we need to run the government in a fiscally responsible way. ~ Eliot Spitzer

Right now in Oregon anybody can open a saloon, and hire people to come in and have sex in front of their patrons. ~ Bill O'Reilly

My difficulty is that on the whole I am not very good at change, I cling to the safe and the known... I must live in this moment, not looking either forward or back, or to right or left, but realizing that unless I am what I am there cannot be any growth. If I promise myself that life will be better, that I shall be a more agreeable person, that I shall be closer to God on the next stage along the way, then I am failing to live as I am called to live because I go on dreaming of that ideal which does not exist. The past has brought me to this moment and if I begin today anew I can also begin tomorrow anew and the day after that, and so I shall be truly open to change. ~ Esther De Waal

The First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment rights in the United States Constitution were being violated in Albany again and again freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, the equal protection of the laws I could count at least 30 such violations. Yet the president, sworn to uphold the Constitution, and all the agencies of the United States government at his disposal, were nowhere to be seen. ~ Howard Zinn

My first open mic, I drank a full pitcher of beer by myself. I wasn't afraid of being in front of people as much as, Is this funny? ~ Doug Stanhope

Snowden has enough [sic] information to cause harm to the U.S. government in a single minute than any other person has ever had. The U.S. government should be on its knees every day begging that nothing happen to Snowden, because if something does happen to him, all the information will be revealed and it could be its worst nightmare. ~ Glenn Greenwald

When Conservatives crusade against government while they are trying to be appointed to head the government, I think that's weird! ~ Rachel Maddow

When art find no temple open, it takes refuge in the workshop. ~ Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach