Special Interest Groups Quotes

I think that the best approach would be if the American people ever insist that we cut down on the massive amounts of money that moves into the campaigns from special interest groups, and if we resist publicly by saying "No more negative advertisements that destroy the reputations of one's opponents." In the meantime, just don't pay any attention to negative ads, if you can avoid them, and try to focus on the issues. ~ Jimmy Carter

Chief Justice Warren Burger, a conservative appointed by Richard Nixon, described the new interpretation of the Second Amendment in an interview after his tenure as 'one of the greatest pieces of fraud-I repeat the word FRAUD-on the American public by special-interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime. ~ Fareed Zakaria

I think growing up in a small town is a good foundation for anyone who decides to enter politics. You get to know people as individuals, not as blocs or members of special interest groups. ~ Ronald Reagan

I'm not sure I want to sound like a candidate. I just want to sound like an American who's trying to make this country a heck of a lot stronger, not a (typical) politician ... but somebody that's going to go in, do the job, not pay attention to all the special interest groups, change the status quo, shift power out of Washington and get America on the track again with strength in our military as well. ~ John Kasich

I want to be able to say what's on my mind and in my heart and what I think is helpful and useful without somebody getting angry, some special interest group deciding this is the time to silence a voice of dissent and attack affiliates, attack sponsors. I'm sort of done with that. ~ Laura Schlessinger

The money that is spent in elections is absolutely unconscionable - even if it's private money. It's true that one's not corrupted by the expenditure of one's own money, but to some extent the system is. We cannot have a system in which the only people you can count on for a vote that doesn't look as though it might be a vote for a special-interest group are people with enormous fortunes. ~ Millicent Fenwick

My good friend Walter Mondale is a good lapdog. He'll give them [special interest groups] everything they want. He'll lick every hand. ~ Ernest Hollings

I'm sorry I'm not gay or Jewish, so I don't have a special interest group of journalists that support me. ~ Vincent Gallo

Is Christianity just another special-interest group, clawing for political power? Or, even if Christians are acting as God's spokesmen, must Christians always conduct themselves politically as if Christianity were just another special-interest group? Do Christians conduct evangelism this way?. ~ Gary North

We hear much of special interest groups. Well, our concern must be for a special interest group that has been too long neglected. It knows no sectional boundaries or ethnic and racial divisions, and it crosses political party lines. It is made up of men and women who raise our food, patrol our streets, man our mines and factories, teach our children, keep our homes, and heal us when we're sick - professionals, industrialists, shopkeepers, clerks, cabbies, and truck drivers. They are, in short, "We the people," this breed called Americans. ~ Ronald Reagan

I've owned a business for 26 years. My family isn't in politics and my supporters aren't special interest groups in Madison and Milwaukee. ~ Mark Neumann

I'm not a caterer. I just have to stay with my creative convictions. At some point, you have to just get past the special-interest groups and do what you're there to do, which is make a movie. ~ Ron Howard

It was clear that the special interest groups in California really wanted the Chinese to be shut out of the country, because that was where the racial tension was the greatest. ~ Iris Chang

Tolerance has come to mean that no one is right and no one is wrong and, indeed, the very act of stating that someone else's views are immoral or incorrect is now taken to be intolerant (of course, from this same point of view, it is all right to be intolerant of those who hold to objectively true moral or religious positions). Once the existence of knowable truth in religion and ethics is denied, authority (the right to be believed and obeyed) gives way to power (the ability to force compliance), reason gives way to rhetoric, the speech writer is replaced by the makeup man, and spirited but civil debate in the culture wars is replaced by politically correct special-interest groups who have nothing left but political coercion to enforce their views on others. ~ J.P. Moreland

Politicians will pander to special-interest groups eager to gain at the public expense. ~ Donald J. Boudreaux

Campaign finance and ethics reform only works if it curtails all special interest groups equally and does not carve out any exceptions to benefit one party or another. 'Pay to play' reform was passed to limit the influence of big spending contractors over the public officials from whom they are trying to obtain work. ~ Thomas Kean, Jr.

Pull in Friendships and Fresh Adventures: Five men are walking across the Golden Gate Bridge on an outing organized by their wives who are college friends. The women move ahead in animated conversation. One man describes the engineering involved in the bridge's long suspension. Another points to the changing tide lines below. A third asked if they've heard of the new phone apps for walking tours. The fourth observes how refreshing it is to talk with people who aren't lawyers like him.

Yes, we tend to notice the details that most relate to our work or our life experience.

It is also no surprise that we instinctively look for those who share our interests. This is especially true in times of increasing pressure and uncertainty. We have an understandable tendency in such times to seek out the familiar and comfortable as a buffer against the disruptive changes surrounding us. In so doing we can inadvertently put ourselves in a cage of similarity that narrows our peripheral vision of the world and our options. The result? We can be blindsided by events and trends coming at us from directions we did not see. The more we see reinforcing evidence that we are right in our beliefs the more rigid we become in defending them. Hint: If you are part of a large association, synagogue, civic group or special interest club, encourage the organization to support the creation of self-organized, special interest groups of no more than seven people, providing a few suggestio ~ Kare Anderson

To be fair, lying is part and parcel of public life. Every politician has lied about something because they are owned by the special interest groups that finance their elections. ~ Peter Schuyler

The reality is that the special interest groups that have lobbied against Free Choice Vouchers object to any measure that would empower employees to have a say in their health benefits because it begins to erode their power in the current health care system. ~ Ron Wyden

If you look at all the lobbyists in Washington, this is not a democracy. This is ruled by special interest groups. That includes the military, the pharmaceutical industry, the people who produce mechanized debt, GMO foods. We are prisoners. ~ Deepak Chopra

The United Nations has come under the control of outlaw nations and self-serving special interest groups. ~ Ginny Brown-Waite

Career politicians do not have the courage to prioritize spending and say no to demanding special interest groups who do not reflect the best interests of the country. ~ Tom Coburn

The U.S. Senate does not allow legislative provisions to be included in appropriations bills, for much the same reason that most Americans are concerned about earmarks: it creates a slippery slope by which lobbyists and special interest groups can sneak provisions into large, must-pass legislation. ~ Ron Wyden

For us the chief point of interest is the place where the game is played. Generatly it is a simple circle, dyutamandalam, drawn on the ground. The circle as such, however, has a magic significance. It is drawn with great care, all sorts of precautions being taken against cheating. The players are not allowed to leave the ring until they have discharged their obligations. But, sometimes a special hall is provisionally erected for the game, and this hall is holy ground. The Mahabharata devotes a whole chapter to the erection of the dicing hall - sabha - where the Pandavas are to meet their prtners. Games, of chance, therefore, have their serious side. They are included in ritual. ~ Johan Huizinga

The problem is, of course, that these interest groups are all asking for changes, but their enthusiasm for change rapidly disappears when it affects the core of their own interests. ~ Angela Merkel

The smaller the unit of government and the more restricted the functions assigned government, the less likely it is that its actions will reflect special interests rather than the general interest. ~ Milton Friedman

One of the problems that we have in the human rights community is that special interests often forget the interests of other victims, and there's competition among victims expressions that are unnecessary. ~ Alfred-Maurice De Zayas

A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea. For millions of years, human beings have been part of one tribe or another. A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate. ~ Seth Godin

Special-interest publications should realize that if they are attracting enough advertising and readers to make a profit, the interest is not so special. ~ Fran Lebowitz

There's an institution here called the National Sound Archive, and there's a character who works there, Paul Wilson. He takes a very special interest in the history of the music and advised Martin Davidson of the existence of these tapes. ~ Evan Parker

Much of what candidates have to do is raise money and appeal to constituencies or interest groups that can provide that money. ~ Robert Scheer

We are the folk song army, every one of us cares. We all hate poverty, war, and injustice unlike the rest of you squares. ~ Tom Lehrer

The Sheldon Adelsons, the Koch brothers, the George Soroses, what we want to try to do is force them into the parties, not so that Kasich or whoever is going to straight to them and trying to kiss up to special interests, but so the parties have the power and they can direct the money. ~ Mark Shields

Our government, National and State, must be freed from the sinister influence or control of special interests. Exactly as the special interests of cotton and slavery threatened our political integrity before the Civil War, so now the great special business interests too often control and corrupt the men and methods of government for their own profit. We must drive the special interests out of politics. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

But fight him we must. You were recruited to Watford because we believe the
Humdrum has taken a special interest in you. We want to protect you; I vow to do so with my life. But you must learn, Simon, as soon as possible, how best to protect yourself. ~ Rainbow Rowell

You are right in your consciousness that we are all echoes and reverberations of the same, and you are noble when your interest and pity as to everything that surrounds you appears to have a sustaining and harmonizing power. Only don't, I beseech you, generalize too much in these sympathies and tendernesses - remember that every life is a special problem which is not yours but another's, and content yourself with the terrible algebra of your own. Don't melt too much into the universe, but be as solid and dense and fixed as you can.

Sorrow comes in great waves - no one can know that better than you - but it rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us it leaves us on the spot and we know that if it is strong we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain. It wears us, uses us, but we wear it and use it in return; and it is blind, whereas we after a manner see.

My dear Grace, you are passing through a darkness in which I myself in my ignorance see nothing but that you have been made wretchedly ill by it; but it is only a darkness, it is not an end, or the end. Don't think, don't feel, any more than you can help, don't conclude or decide - don't do anything but wait. Everything will pass, and serenity and accepted mysteries and disillusionments, and the tenderness of a few good people, and new opportunities and ever so much of life, in a word, will remain. You will do all sorts of things yet, and I will help you. The only thing is not to melt ~ Henry James

If I had rubies, riches, and crowns, I'd buy the whole world and change things around. ~ Bob Dylan

I think we are making progress, but we have long way to go. People also have got to understand the agenda that we are fighting for. This is a senator who has taken on every powerful special interest, whether it's Wall Street, whether it's drug companies who are ripping off the American people, the military industrial complex. ~ Bernie Sanders

Indeed, the "whole bourgeoisie" on whose behalf the government was acting as its "committee" was a composite of a vast multitude of businessmen appearing as a conglomeration of many different and divergent groups and interests. ~ Paul A. Baran

Still, it was a starting point for someone with my special skills - the professional ones - and I pondered it as I worked. It was, after all, an area of real personal interest to me. And additionally, if this had been Deborah's case, she would almost certainly have demanded some kind of special insight from Sick and Twisted Me. So I thought about it, and although I came up with nothing helpful, at least it passed the time. ~ Jeff Lindsay

You write things that are of interest to you. There's no focus group. ~ Zach Galifianakis

Until you actually join this government you say that you defend and join it on the same basis as any other citizen then I have every intention of regarding you as I would any other lobbyist for any other interest group demanding special privileges for its members.

Fyor Rodan ~ Walter Jon Williams

I suspect everybody has a degree of psychic ability, just as a everybody has a degree of athletic or artistic ability. Some people have special gifts; other people have a particular interest that leads them to develop their abilities. But the phenomenon itself is ordinary and widespread. ~ Michael Crichton

My special cause, the one that alerts my interest and quickens the pace of my life, is to preserve the wildflowers and native plants that define the regions of our land-to encourage and promote their use in appropriate areas, and thus help pass on to generation in waiting the quiet jobs and satisfactions I have known since my childhood. ~ Lady Bird Johnson

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

Cognitive rigidities may also prevent social groups from mobilizing in their own self-interest. In the United States, many working-class voters support candidates promising to lower taxes on the wealthy, despite the fact that this hurts their own economic situations. They do so in the belief that such policies will spur economic growth that will eventually trickle down to them, or else make government deficits self-financing. The theory has proved remarkably tenacious in the face of considerable evidence that it is not true. ~ Francis Fukuyama

The reverse is a system in which you basically let people who were leaders in one way or another - people sometimes decried as party bosses, people who are part of special interests make the decision. And I think that's a worse system than the one we have. ~ Geoffrey Cowan

What is happening to teachers now across this nation is a disgrace. The attacks on them are a blot on our nation. Teachers and students are not different interest groups. Anyone who demeans teachers demeans education and hurts children. ~ Diane Ravitch

In general I lacked principally the ability to provide even in the slightest detail for the real future. I thought only of things in the present and their present condition, not because of thoroughness or any special, strong interest, but rather, to the extent that weakness in thinking was not the cause, because of sorrow and fear – sorrow, because the present was so sad for me that I thought I could not leave it before it resolved itself into happiness; fear, because, like my fear of the slightest action in the present, I also considered myself, in view of my contemptible, childish appearance, unworthy of forming a serious, responsible opinion of the great, manly future which usually seemed so impossible to me that every short step forward appeared to me to be counterfeit and the next step unattainable. ~ Franz Kafka

I'm not an advocate for disability issues. Human issues are what interest me. You can't possibly speak for a diverse group of people. I don't know what it's like to be an arm amputee, or have even one flesh-and-bone leg, or to have cerebral palsy. ~ Aimee Mullins

The bill's a textbook example of special interest pork barrel politics at work, and I have no choice but to veto it. ~ Ronald Reagan

The collective influence of you and the other leaders will bring the rest along. If this does not happen, divided interest and loyalty will occur within the group. ~ John C. Maxwell

In politics, the connection between what you pay for and what you actually get is problematic at best ...
This is another way of asserting that your vote in the marketplace counts for so much more than your vote in the polling booth. Cast your dollars for the washing machine of your choice and that is what you get
nothing more and nothing less. Pull the lever for the politician of your choice and, most of the time (if you're lucky), you will get some of what you do want and much of what you don't. The votes of a special interest lobby may ultimately cancel out yours. As someone much wiser than me once said, "[P]olitics may not be the oldest profession, but the results are often the same."
~ Lawrence W. Reed

Government cannot be all things to all people. ~ Jane D. Hull

Take those kids and raise them up, teach them how to drink out of a righteous cup. ~ James Brown

Every special interest is entitled to justice full, fair and complete ... but not one is entitled to a vote in Congress, to a voice on the bench or to representation in any public office. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

It is among the commonplaces of education that we often first cut off the living root and then try to replace its natural functions by artificial means. Thus we suppress the child's curiosity and then when he lacks a natural interest in learning he is offered special coaching for his scholastic coaching for his scholastic difficulties. ~ Alice Duer Miller

We plan to pick up another five seats in the Senate and hold the House through redistricting through 2012. And rather than negotiate with the teachers' unions and the trial lawyers and the various leftist interest groups, we intend to break them. ~ Grover Norquist

So when you go up against the Far Right you go up against the big financial special interests like the Halliburtons of the world, the big oil companies, the big energy companies who work so hard to rip us off. ~ Barbara Boxer

Senator Obama is a gifted and eloquent young man who can do great things for our country in the years ahead. But my friends, eloquence is no substitute for a record - not in these tough times for America. In the Senate he has not reached across party lines to get anything significant done, nor has he been willing to take on powerful interest groups in the Democratic Party. ~ Joe Lieberman

If everyone in America can easily see who and what their lawmakers are requesting taxpayer money for, we can keep elected officials honest, end the days of political, special interest favors, and reduce wasteful spending. ~ Kirsten Gillibrand

I don't rock for Cancer. I rock for cash, and the topless dancers. ~ Kid Rock

Of course, on a job, you have a shared common interest in the fact that you're there making a movie or making a TV show, and that creates unification within a group. There has to be something more than just the work for that to continue on, for that friendship to continue on. ~ Jamie Campbell Bower

When the skies and the oceans are clean again. Then we shall be free. ~ Garth Brooks

People with Asperger's couldn't control what they were interested in. It was a stroke of luck that his special interest was financial markets and not, say, collecting lawn mower catalogues. ~ Michael Lewis

Ever since 1945 the federal government has held and indeed increased its importance as the first customer of the American economy. Government spending had been the primary economic stimulant and to increase it had been the goal of hundreds of interest groups; hopes of balanced budgets and cheap, business-like administration always ran aground upon this fact. What was more, the United States was a democracy; whatever the doctrinaire objections to it, and however much rhetoric might be devoted to attacking it, a welfare state slowly advanced because voters wanted it that way. These facts gradually made the old ideal of totally free enterprise, unchecked and uninvaded by the influence of government, unreal. ~ J.M. Roberts

Ants are good citizens, they place group interests first. ~ Clarence Day

The Open Market Committee, as presently established, is plainly not in the public interest. This committee must be operated by purely public servants, representatives of the people as a whole and not any single interest group. The Open Market Committee should be abolished, and its powers transferred to the Federal Reserve Board - the present public members of the committee, with reasonably short terms of office. ~ Wright Patman

We fought the Revolutionary War for no taxation without representation, it seems to me that we are much worse off today, because we are heavily taxed, and only the king's corporations control this Country, together with mob rule, of the special interests. ~ James Montgomery