Policy Makers Quotes

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

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

I was an intelligence officer, not a policy-maker. ~ Cofer Black

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

❝Washington - perhaps as many global powers have done in the past - uses what I might call the "immaculate conception" theory of crises abroad. That is, we believe we are essentially out there, just minding our own business, trying to help make the world right, only to be endlessly faced with a series of spontaneous, nasty challenges from abroad to which we must react. There is not the slightest consideration that perhaps US policies themselves may have at least contributed to a series of unfolding events. This presents a huge paradox: how can America on the one hand pride itself on being the world's sole global superpower, with over seven hundred military bases abroad and the Pentagon's huge global footprint, and yet, on the other hand, be oblivious to and unacknowledging of the magnitude of its own role - for better or for worse - as the dominant force charting the course of world events? This Alice-in-Wonderland delusion affects not just policy makers, but even the glut of think tanks that abound in Washington. In what may otherwise often be intelligent analysis of a foreign situation, the focus of each study is invariably the other country, the other culture, the negative intentions of other players; the impact of US actions and perceptions are quite absent from the equation. It is hard to point to serious analysis from mainstream publications or think tanks that address the role of the United States itself in helping create current problems or crises, through pol ~ Graham E. Fuller

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The chief causes of the environmental destruction that faces us today are not biological, or the product of individual human choice. They are social and historical, rooted in the productive relations, technological imperatives, and historically conditioned demographic trends that characterize the dominant social system. Hence, what is ignored or downplayed in most proposals to remedy the environmental crisis is the most critical challenge of all: the need to transform the major social bases of environmental degradation, and not simply to tinker with its minor technical bases. As long as prevailing social relations remain unquestioned, those who are concerned about what is happening are left with few visible avenues for environmental action other than purely personal commitments to recycling and green shopping, socially untenable choices between jobs and the environment, or broad appeals to corporations, political policy-makers, and the scientific establishment--the very interests most responsible for the current ecological mess. ~ John Bellamy Foster

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

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

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

It is very important for scientists to engage with the media – to ensure the public has access to accurate, evidence-based scientific information, to keep us ever-present in the minds of policy makers and funders, and to inform public debate. ~ Simon Wessely

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

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

For the most part policy-makers are too nervous about offending people, yet when BRITAIN really was GREAT that was the last thought on our minds. ~ Karl Wiggins

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

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

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

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

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

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

The lesson of history, then, is that even as institutions and policy makers improve, there will always be a temptation to stretch the limits. Just as an individual can go bankrupt no matter how rich she starts out, a financial system can collapse under the pressure of greed, politics, and profits no matter how well regulated it seems to be. ~ Carmen M. Reinhart

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Betrayed and abandoned, cut adrift or superannuated, coerced or manipulated, speeded up, cheated, living in the shadows - this is a recipe for acquiescence. Yet conditions of life and labor as bad as or even far worse than these once were instigators to social upheaval. Alongside the massing of enemies on the outside - employers, insulated and self-protective union leaders, government policy makers, the globalized sweatshop, and the globalized megabank - something in the tissue of working-class life had proved profoundly disempowering and also accounted for the silence.

Work itself had lost its cultural gravitas. What in part qualified the American Revolution as a legitimate overturning of an ancien régime was its political emancipation of labor. Until that time, work was considered a disqualifying disability for participating in public life. It entailed a degree of deference to patrons and a narrow-minded preoccupation with day-to-day affairs that undermined the possibility of disinterested public service. By opening up the possibility of democracy, the Revolution removed, in theory, that crippling impairment and erased an immemorial chasm between those who worked and those who didn't need to. And by inference this bestowed honor on laboring mankind, a recognition that was to infuse American political culture for generations.

But in our new era, the nature of work, the abuse of work, exploitation at work, and all the prophecies and jeremiads, the condem ~ Steve Fraser

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

It's easy to look back on those strange days at the end of September 2003 and identify the warnings signs about Putin and Russia that American policy makers missed. But it would be unfair to them, and unfair to history, to do so without recognizing that the way things turned out was not inevitable. There really was the spore of a bright, new future in 2003, and it is certainly true that Russia itself had the resources and the capability to go in another direction. That things turned out as they did is a tragedy, a sprawling but explicable tragedy. And it is not Russia's alone. ~ Rachel Maddow

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

THREE LEVELS OF LAW

America's Declaration of Independence names three kinds of law: the laws of man, of nature and nature's God.

The Book of Change is based on the laws of natural change. They emanate from and depend on divine law and serve as the rightful foundation of civil law. Clearly, laws legislated in ignorance of or in opposition to natural and divine law are not likely to work out well. Policy makers at all levels would do well to give this point careful thought.

In Common Sense, Thomas Paine wrote about the relationship of divine, natural and human law in a way that inspired readers at the time of the American Revolution to fight for freedom from tyranny.

Approaching natural law from the deeper understanding of the ancients could inspire a reinvention of democracy now.

Sages say that freedom from tyranny begins with dispelling ignorance and overcoming toxic, negative emotions. Inalienable freedom starts with the self-awareness and self-mastery which can be gained by diligent use of the I Ching. pp. 3-4. ~ Patricia E. West

Peace with all the world is my sincere wish. I am sure it is our true policy, and am persuaded it is the ardent desire of the government. ~ George Washington

In the 1960's, some old-timers on Wall Street-the men who remembered the trauma of the 1929 Crash and the Great Depression-gave me a warning: "When we fade from this business, something will be lost. That is the memory of 1929." Because of that personal recollection, they said, they acted with more caution, than they otherwise might. Collectively, their generation provided an in-built brake on the wildest form of speculation, an insurance policy against financial excess and consequent catastrophe. Their memories provided a practical form of long-term dependence in the financial markets. Is it any wonder that in 1987 when most of those men were gone and their wisdom forgotten, the market encountered its first crash in nearly sixty years? Or that, two decades later, we would see the biggest bull market, and the worst bear market, in generations? Yet standard financial theory holds that, in modeling markets, all that matters is today's news and the expectations of tomorrow's news. ~ Benoit B Mandelbrot

Terror is a powerful means of policy and one would have to be a hypocrite not to understand this. ~ Leon Trotsky

Crucial to this is what conservatives see as the essence of America - the Ladder of Success myth. As long as free enterprise flourishes and anyone with enough self-discipline and imagination can become an entrepreneur, the Morality of Reward and Punishment will hold and all will be well. The logic of conservatism locates so-called "social" problems within people, not within society. For this reason, it would make no sense to conservatives to use class and social forces as forms of explanation and justification for social policy. Nature ~ George Lakoff

You did not seem to me over-fond of money. And this is the way in general with those who have not made it themselves, while those who have are twice as fond of it as anyone else. For just as poets are fond of their own poems, and fathers of their own children, so money-makers become devoted to money, not only because, like other people, they find it useful, but because it's their own creation. ~ Plato

Policy decisions on climate change are being deliberated every day by those without full knowledge of the science, and often with intentional misinformation spawned by special interests. ~ James Hansen

The older America, until the 1890s and in some respects until 1914, was wrapped in the security of continental isolation, village society, the Protestant denominations, and a flourishing industrial capitalism. But reluctantly, year by year, over several decades, it has been drawn into the twentieth century and forced to cope with its unpleasant realities: first the incursions of cosmopolitanism and skepticism, then the disappearance of American isolation and easy military security, the collapse of traditional capitalism and its supplementation by a centralized welfare state, finally the unrelenting costs and stringencies of the Second World War, the Korean War, and the cold war. As a consequence, the heartland of America, filled with people who are often fundamentalist in religion, nativist in prejudice, isolationist in foreign policy, and conservative in economics, has constantly rumbled with an underground revolt against all these tormenting manifestations of our modern predicament. ~ Richard Hofstadter

Bill Clinton, who, to his credit, has established a clear and consistent foreign policy, which is as follows: Whenever the president of the United States gets anywhere near any foreign head of state, living or dead, he gives that leader a big old hug. This has proven to be an effective way to get foreign leaders to do what we want: Many heads of state are willing to sign any random document that President Clinton thrusts in front of them, without reading it, just so he will stop embracing them. ~ Dave Barry

There are lots of other issues in policy including the stem cell issue. ~ David Baltimore

The God of metaphysics is but an idea. But the God of religion, the Maker of heaven and earth, the sovereign Judge of actions and thoughts, is a power. ~ Joseph Joubert

Most people who travel look only at what they are directed to look at. Great is the power of the guidebook maker, however ignorant. ~ John Muir

Pakistan, she observed, had a policy of "profiting from the disputes of others," and she cited Pakistan's desire to benefit from tension between the great powers and Pakistan's early focus on the Palestine dispute as examples of this tendency. "Pakistan was occupied with her own grave internal problem, but she still found time to talk fervently of sending 'a liberation army to Palestine to help the Arabs free the Holy Land from the Jews ~ Husain Haqqani

There are some places that have had real quarrels with the United States' policies, but I think the country is very well-respected worldwide. ~ Condoleezza Rice

When I tour I'm going to countries to play music for people. My presence in a country is not an endorsement or a condemnation of that country's policies. My presence in a country is an effort to connect with people through playing music. ~ Moby

Ma Ying-jeou tends to use cross-strait policy as an election tool and a political tool, too, and my position is that we don't use that as a political tool because that is an issue that is critical and essential to the interests of the Taiwanese people. ~ Tsai Ing-wen

Messrs Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs Purveyors of Aids to Magical Mischief-Makers are proud to present THE MARAUDER'S MAP It ~ J.K. Rowling

I have been happy ... in believing that ... whatever follies we may be led into as to foreign nations, we shall never give up our Union, the last anchor of our hope, and that alone which is to prevent this heavenly country from becoming an arena of gladiators. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Some say that because the United States was wrong before, it cannot possibly be right now, or has not the right to be right. (The British Empire sent a fleet to Africa and the Caribbean to maintain the slave trade while the very same empire later sent another fleet to enforce abolition. I would not have opposed the second policy because of my objections to the first; rather it seems to me that the second policy was morally necessitated by its predecessor.) ~ Christopher Hitchens

Monetary policy cannot do much about long-run growth, all we can try to do is to try to smooth out periods where the economy is depressed because of lack of demand. ~ Ben Bernanke

The great god Ra, whose shrine once covered acres, is filler now for crossword puzzle makers. ~ Keith Preston

We on our part will stick to our independent foreign policy of peace, acting forever as a strong defender of world peace and a persistent proponent of common development. ~ Jinato Hu

The Majors are the preachers, teachers and wisdom keepers, The Minors are your everyday highs, your lows, your woes and what grows, while the Courts are the actors, the players and the trouble makers. ~ Tonya Sheridan

For Christians to influence the world with the truth of God's Word requires the recovery of the great Reformation doctrine of vocation. Christians are called to God's service not only in church professions but also in every secular calling. The task of restoring truth to the culture depends largely on our laypeople.

To bring back truth, on a practical level, the church must encourage Christians to be not merely consumers of culture but makers of culture. The church needs to cultivate Christian artists, musicians, novelists, filmmakers, journalists, attorneys, teachers, scientists, business executives, and the like, teaching its laypeople the sense in which every secular vocation-including, above all, the callings of husband, wife, and parent--is a sphere of Christian ministry, a way of serving God and neighbor that is grounded in God's truth. Christian laypeople must be encouraged to be leaders in their fields, rather than eager-to-please followers, working from the assumptions of their biblical worldview, not the vapid clichés of pop culture. ~ J. Gresham Machen

We intend to continue our practice of working only with people whom we like and admire. This policy not only maximizes our chances for good results, it also ensures us an extraordinarily good time. ~ Warren Buffett

A policy of peaceful coexistence between Israel and Palestine is the foundation of the tower, which will be built for the future; and visible from afar, the tower will be a non-violent symbol forever lasting peace. ~ Kristian Goldmund Aumann

Every selfish motive therefore, every family attachment, ought to recommend such a system of policy as would provide no less carefully for the rights and happiness of the lowest than of the highest orders of Citizens. ~ George Mason

I'm a middle child, and I'm pretty diplomatic: the peace-maker. ~ Carrie Coon

We made this inexplicable turn into Iraq, where we've lost lives, money, honour and the coalition on [George] Bush's watch. Surely he's not suggesting that if the Democrats win, things can get worse. I mean, all we can do now is to look at our field policy and change the course. We need more diplomatic outreach toward Iran, Syria and Middle Eastern allies, and less bluster and less threats, and fewer troops. ~ Jesse Jackson

I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way. ~ Peter Pace

Classic Ballet,

Keep away, keep building your creaky fairy castles, keep cloning clones and meaningless manners, hang on to your beanstalk ballerinas and their midget male shadows, run yourself out of business with your tons of froufrou and costly clattery toe shoes that ruin all chances for illusions of lightness, keep on crowding the minds of blind balletomanes who prefer dainty poses to the eloquent strength of momentum, who have forgotten or never known the manings of gesture, who would nod their noses to barefoot embargos ("so grab me" spelt backwards). Continue to repolish your stiff technique and to ignore a public that hungers for something other than a bag of tricks and the empty-headedness of surface patterns.

Just keep it up, keep imitating yourself, and, , go grow your own dance makers. Come on, don't keep trying to filter modern ones through your so-safe extablishment. We're to be seen undiluted, undistorted, not absorbed by your hollow world like blood into a sponge.

Yours truly,
A Different Leaf on Our Family Tree ~ Paul Taylor

I give nightly praise to my Maker that I never cast a ballot to bring that lazy, disreputable, ill-tempered beast into what was once my home. I'm glad that I had the courage to go on record as opposing that illegitimate, shameless flea-bag that now shares my bed and board. You abstainer, you! ~ Frank B. Gilbreth Jr.

No policy that does not rest upon some philosophical public opinion can be permanently maintained. ~ Abraham Lincoln

The basic prescription for preventing deflation is straightforward, at least in principle: Use monetary and fiscal policy as needed to support aggregate spending, in a manner as nearly consistent as possible with full utilization of economic resources and low and stable inflation. In other words, the best way to get out of trouble is not to get into it in the first place. ~ Ben Bernanke

Caring about policy is important - people in washington forget. ~ Tabitha Soren

The lesson of the last year is this: foreign policy can't be managed through the politics of personality, and our President would do well to take note of an observation John F. Kennedy made once he was in office - that all of the world's problems aren't his predecessor's fault. ~ Sarah Palin

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

Elric: We are dreamers, shapers, singers, and makers. We study the mysteries of laser and circuit, crystal and scanner, holographic demons and invocation of equations. These are the tools we employ, and we know many things.

John Sheridan: Such as?

Elric: The true secrets, the important things. Fourteen words to make someone fall in love with you forever. Seven words to make them go without pain. How to say good-bye to a friend who is dying. How to be poor. How to be rich. How to rediscover dreams when the world has stolen them. That is why we are going away - to preserve that knowledge.

Sheridan: From what?

Elric: There is a storm coming, a black and terrible storm. We would not have our knowledge lost or used to ill purpose. From this place we will launch ourselves into the stars. With luck, you will never see our kind again in your lifetime. I know you have your orders, Captain. Detain us if you wish. But I cannot tell you where we are going. I can only ask you to trust us. ~ J. Michael Straczynski

Republicans are being counseled to move the party to the left, but in my experience, those who advocate more liberal policies for the GOP are wrongheaded or Democrats, or both. ~ Liz Cheney

When a man died, there had to be blame. Jimmy Cross understood this. You could blame the war, You could blame the idiots who made the war. You could blame Kiowa for going to it. You could blame the rain. You could blame the river. You could blame the field, the mud, the climate. You could blame the enemy. You could blame the mortar rounds. You could blame people who were too lazy to read a newspaper, who were bored by the daily body counts, who switched channels at the mention of politics. You could blame whole nations. You could blame God. You could blame the munitions makers or Karl Marx or a trick of fate of an old man in Omaha who forgot to vote. ~ Tim O'Brien

When the president during the campaign
said he was against nation building,
I didn't realize he meant our nation. ~ Al Franken

A political society does not live to conduct foreign policy; it would be more correct to say that it conducts foreign policy in order to live. ~ George F. Kennan

A divine revelation should not consist only in uprooting us from the world's profanity in order to install us statically within a sacred world, in the bosom of which we could continue to lead almost the same life we led in the profane world. To enter into revelation is not merely to change objects as we do furniture. It is to be converted. Not to be converted once, but to be converted always. Sacred forms, rites, symbols and the Scriptures are basically conversion-makers, which means that we are never done with converting, never done with understanding, because they perplex and surpass all understanding. ~ Jean Borella