Special Interests Quotes

Paralysis of leadership is due in part to the unseen grip of the special interests. ~ John W. Gardner

Those individuals who refuse to join in the lies supporting the war are condemned as being unpatriotic, ill-informed, or friends of the enemy. If the propaganda doesn't silence them and they are seen as a sufficient threat to the war machine, the government will enact laws granting power to arrest and punish those refusing to succumb to the propaganda. This will be done not only to punish the direct targets. It will also be done to frighten others who may be considering boldly challenging the authoritarians supporting a war that will only benefit the special interests. ~ Ron Paul

This is a revolution of the mind, get your mind together and get away from drugs. ~ James Brown

Everybody says that they're against the special interests. I'm the only one the special interests don't give any money to. ~ John McCain

This year, we are going to take our government out of the hands of corporate special interests and put it back into the hands of Ohio families - where it belongs. ~ Sherrod Brown

The best way to begin genuine bipartisanship to make America stronger is to work together on the real crises facing our country, not to manufacture an artificial crisis to serve a special interest agenda out of touch with the needs of Americans. ~ John F. Kerry

Most presidents have been controlled by forces that control money and special interests. When Donald Trump refused their money, he refused their control. This made him dangerous. ~ Louis Farrakhan

Such is their mutual antipathy that friends have observed that Diana finds her husband's very presence upsetting and disturbing. He in turn views his wife with indifference tinged with dislike. When a Sunday newspaper reported how the Prince had pointedly ignored her at a concert at Buckingham Palace to celebrate the Queen Mother's 90th birthday, she remarked to friends that she found their surprise rather odd. "He ignores me everywhere and has done for a long time. He just dismisses me." She would, for example, never contemplate making any input into any of his special interests such as architecture, the environment or agriculture. Painful experience tells her that any suggestions would be treated with ill-disguised contempt. "He makes her feel intellectually insecure and inferior and constantly reinforces that message," notes a close friend. When Charles took his wife to see A Woman of No Importance when he celebrated his 43rd birthday, the irony was not lost on her friends. ~ Andrew Morton

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

I strongly recommend that students with autism get involved in special interest clubs in some of the areas they naturally excel at. Being with people who share your interests makes socializing easier. ~ Temple Grandin

From the moment I take office, I will stand up to the special interests and stand with hardworking families so that we can give America back its future and its ideals. ~ John F. Kerry

Everybody needs a helping hand, take a look at your fellow man. ~ Amy Grant

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

It is something radically different from them all. They are out for battle and extol violence; liberalism, on the contrary, desires peace and the ascendancy of ideas. It is for this reason that all parties, however badly disunited they may otherwise be, form a united front against liberalism.
The enemies of liberalism have branded it as the party of the special interests of the capitalists. This is characteristic of their mentality. They simply cannot understand a political ideology as anything but the advocacy of certain special privileges opposed to the general welfare.
One cannot look on liberalism as a party of special interests, privileges, and prerogatives, because private ownership of the means of production is not a privilege redounding to the exclusive advantage of the capitalists, but an institution in the interest of the whole of society and consequently an institution that benefits everyone. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

There are many special interests skilful at manipulating circumstances and communications in such a way as to benefit their own ends and not necessarily the public good. ~ Randal Marlin

It is fair to say, Bernie Sanders, that in your definition, as you being the self-proclaimed gatekeeper for progressivism, I don't know anyone else who fits that definition, but I know a lot of really hard fighting progressives in the Democratic party who have stood up time, and time again against special interests, against the powerful on behalf of those who are left behind and left out. ~ Hillary Clinton

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

I'm not going to rule out running for a second term. But, I think you have to be psychologically prepared to walk away from the job after four years. It's the only way that you cannot be influenced by those special interests. ~ Dick Murphy

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

The Reagan-Bush years have exalted private gain over public obligation, special interests over the common good, wealth and fame over work and family. The 1980s ushered in a Gilded Age of greed and selfishness, of irresponsibility and excess, and of neglect. ~ William J. Clinton

You've been off fighting the war in the Outer Rim. You don't know what it's been like, dealing with all the petty squabbles and special interests and greedy, grasping fools in the Senate, and Palpatine's constant, cynical, ruthless maneuvering for power - he carves away chunks of our freedom and bandages the wounds with tiny scraps of security. And for what? Look at this planet, Obi-Wan! We have given up so much freedom - how secure do we look? ~ Matthew Woodring Stover

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

Bureaucrats want bigger bureaus. Special interests are interested in whatever's special to them. These two groups bring great pressure to bear upon politicians who have another agenda yet:
to cater to the temporary whims and fads of the public and the press. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

We don't need more of the same, typical politicians fighting for themselves and for special interests. We need someone to believe in our small-business owners again and someone to champion those folks who play by the rules. ~ Tim Walz

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

While the word "republic" derives etymologically from the Latin "res publica" - which literally means "the people's thing," what a republic or a "republican form of government" is today remains debatable; but what it is not is clear: No matter its political composition, a government that does not adhere to the rule of law, is ruled by a president who dictates, courts that legislate, and a legislature that is elected by a minority, led by the few, and administered by members who fail to embody the will of the people, represent party caucuses and factious special interests, overlook executive overreach, transfer legislative powers, and maintain monarchic lengths of time in office - and all of this to the detriment of justice, the Union, and the Constitution - is not a republic or republican form of government but something else. ~ Anonymous

Free all the prisoners everywhere, all they want is truth and justice, all they need is love and care. ~ John Lennon

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

I went to school for marketing and advertising, so I have a special interest in good and funny commercials and why they work and why they're funny - which is one of the reasons I, like many people, like watching the Super Bowl, besides the game. ~ Kevin Nealon

He had no illusions about the dangerousness of his mission. He spent the first year meeting with different chiefs of gangs in New York, laying the groundwork, sounding them out, proposing spheres of influence that would be honored by a loosely bound confederated council. But there were too many factions, too many special interests that conflicted. Agreement was impossible. Like other great rulers and lawgivers in history Don Corleone decided that order and peace were impossible until the number of reigning states had been reduced to a manageable number. ~ Mario Puzo

I think our government has gotten so far off track that it's high time something like this happened. All of these partisan politicians. You can see where they've gotten us. They cultivated this cancer, fought senselessly over how they should treat it, and now they're shocked to find that it's malignant and spreading? I'll tell you how we need to treat it. We need to oust the sons-a-bitches and bring the control back to the people. We're going to have to start this whole country up from scratch, using the Constitution, of course. We need to stick a cork in all of these special interests and get back to doing what's best for us. We've got this moment in history to set things right. Does that make sense to you guys? ~ Nicholas Antinozzi

What one man can do is dream. What one man can do is love. What one man can do is change the world. ~ John Denver

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

Yes, agriculture subsidies are far too generous. They need to be reined in because they cater to special interests while distorting free market competition. Yes, the farm laws are an anachronistic mess. ~ Juan Williams

Don't start me talking
I could talk all night
My mind goes sleepwalking
While I'm putting the world to right. ~ Elvis Costello

Special interests and opponents have figured out how easy it is to disrupt town halls and get their own message out. The days of the truly free-form town halls may be over. ~ Mark McKinnon

Democrats want to use the slowdown as an excuse to do what their special interests are always begging for: higher taxes, bigger government and less trade with other nations. ~ Mitt Romney

Why is it that we all say we hate our hypocritical politicians being controlled by special interests groups, and every election...we vote them in again. ~ Colleen Hitchcock

I do a lot of referendums. They can't talk back. They don't have wives. They don't have friends who tell you how to run the campaign. They are supported by special interests, so there's a lot of money in them. ~ Roger Stone

I have taken special interest in these accounts [of UFOs].. I think there may be substance to some of these reports ... I think we owe it to the people to establish credibility regarding UFOs and to produce the greatest possible enlightenment on this subject. ~ Gerald R. Ford

In my legal practice, I have seen certain Federal judges controlled or influenced by large corporations ... , by large law firms ... on more than one occasion(, and) ... by special interests ... (some) ought to be thrown right off the bench because they are breaking every code of conduct ... ~ Orrin Hatch

You may think that tax policy sounds like the most boring topic in the world. That is precisely what most governments, corporations, and special interests would like you to think, because tax policy is where much of society and the economy gets shaped. It is also where well-informed citizens can achieve socioeconomic revolutions with astonishing speed and effectiveness - but only if they realize how much power they might wield in this domain. If citizens don't understand taxes, they don't understand how, when, and where their government expropriates money, time, and freedom from their lives. They also don't understand how most governments bias consumption over savings, and bias some forms of consumption over other forms, thereby distorting the trait-display systems that people might otherwise favor. ~ Geoffrey Miller

If you're looking for someone to go to Washington, to go along to get along, to get - to agree with the career politicians in both parties who get in bed with the lobbyists and special interests, then I ain't your guy. ~ Ted Cruz

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

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

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

Their lifelong love of learning, their remarkable wide-ranging intellectual curiosity, was fostered primarily by their father. He read aloud to them at night, eliciting their responses to works of history and literature. He organized amateur plays for them, encourage pursuit of special interests, prompted them to write essays on their readings, and urge them to recite poetry. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

There are very powerful and wealthy special interests who want to privatize or dismember virtually every function that government now performs, whether it is Social Security, Medicare, public education or the Postal Service. ~ Bernie Sanders

awareness of a problem does not mean much - particularly when you have special interests and self-serving institutions in play. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The pressure of special interests, the demands of special sections of the state, the needs of friends, all must be subordinated to the good of the people as a whole. ~ Arthur Capper

Democracy entails a correlation between the public interest as expressed by a majority of the population and the governmental policies that affect them. The term encompasses various manifestations, including direct, participatory and representative democracy, but Governments must be responsive to people and not to special interests such as the military-industrial complex, financial bankers and transnational corporations. Democracy is inclusive and does not privilege an anthropological aristocracy. ~ Alfred-Maurice De Zayas

The danger is that the compromises and special interests inherent in Kyoto-style targets and cap-and-trade will be accepted because of bureaucratic momentum. ~ James Hansen

New information technologies-including email, the web, and computerized blast-faxes and phone calls-have fundamentally changed the landscape of political competition in modern democracies. They've done so in three ways: by dramatically boosting the access of individuals and special interests to politically potent information, by making it easier for such people to coordinate their activities and exert political power, and by greatly increasing the pace of events within our political systems. ~ Thomas Homer-Dixon

I do care about the mercury contamination which this country will be experiencing because of the attempted sellout by this administration to special interests which will result in more mercury in the blood of young children in America. ~ Jay Inslee

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

I don't wanna die in a nuclear war, I want to sail away to a distant shore, and make like an apeman. ~ Ray Davies

Any big organization can be subverted by governments or multinational special interests. They have the resources to cast doubt and fear over any group they feel threatened by. ~ Arlo Guthrie

The Congress is virtually incapable of passing any reforms unless they first get permission from the powerful special interests who are most affected by the proposal. ~ Al Gore

We have weakened the parties and strengthened all the special interests. ~ Mark Shields

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

We are stardust, we are golden and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden. ~ Joni Mitchell

I will not stand by while the special interests use the same old tactics to keep things exactly the way they are ... Not this time. Not now. ~ Barack Obama

It would be deplorable if the special interests had the power to silence those voices in the media that they find uncomfortable. ~ Stieg Larsson

Do what is best for most people, not just a few. Prevent your elites and growing middle class, those who often benefit most from growth and development, from turning into a special interests group that blocks reforms. ~ Sri Mulyani Indrawati

I've decided to run for the U.S. Senate because I believe Wisconsin families need a senator who will work hard to deliver results for the middle class - a leader with the courage to do what's right, no matter how tough the odds or how powerful the special interests we have to fight. ~ Tammy Baldwin

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

If congress refuses to obey its own rules. If congress refuses to pass a balanced budget. If congress refuses to read the Bills. Then I say, sweep the place clean, limit their terms, and send them HOME! ~ Rand Paul

You measure peace with guns, progress in megatons. Who's left when the war is won? ~ Jackson Browne

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

Why do Americans find government so baffling and irritating-even though many of us depend on public programs for a secure retirement, an affordable mortgage, or a college loan? In this timely and important book, political scientist Suzanne Mettler explains how the United States has come to rely on hidden, indirect policies that privilege special interests but puzzle regular citizens. American democracy can do better, and she shows how. Politicians and the public alike have much to learn from her brilliant and engaging analysis. ~ Theda Skocpol

Journalism's ultimate purpose is to inform the reader, to bring him each day a letter from home and never to permit the serving of special interests. ~ Arthur Ochs Sulzberger

No, there is no real Left now. If you are just counting heads, there are probably more people involved than in the 1960s, but they are atomized, committed to different special interests - gay rights, environmental rights, this, that. They don't coalesce into a movement that can really do things. ~ Noam Chomsky

One of the fundamental necessities in a representative government such as ours is to make certain that the men to whom the people delegate their power shall serve the people by whom they are elected, and not the special interests. I believe that every national officer, elected or appointed, should be forbidden to perform any service or receive any compensation, directly or indirectly, from interstate corporations; and a similar provision could not fail to be useful within the States. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Today financial capitalism is fraught with special interests, corporate monopolies, and an opacity that would have boggled Smith's mind. Let me be clear: despite my criticism of our existing model of financial capitalism, this book isn't anticapitalist. I am not in favor of a planned economy or a turn away from a market system. I simply don't think that the system we have now is a properly functioning market system. ~ Rana Foroohar

I ask you: turn a deaf ear to the special interests. Let politics stand down for a while. don't waste anytime thinking about future elections until we've done our jobs here. ~ Bob Riley

How can I save my little boy from Oppenheimer's deadly toy? ~ Sting

The money needed to run for office, the money spent on lobbying by special interests, the ever-increasing economic disparity, and the well-funded legislative decisions, all favor corporate interests over the people. ~ Neil Young

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

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

We need to be wise consumers of information in an age of artificially created reality, written by professional propagandists, bought and paid for by special interests who many times disguise themselves as grassroots movements but are nothing but AstroTurf. They'll give you turf burns and turf toe, but never the truth. ~ H.L. Wegley

When it comes to federal elections law, Tom DeLay and his special-interest friends live by one set of rules, and everyone else lives by a very different set. ~ Rahm Emanuel

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

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

We didn't become the most prosperous country in the world just by rewarding greed and recklessness. We didn't come this far by letting the special interests run wild. We didn't do it just by gambling and chasing paper profits on Wall Street. We built this country by making things, by producing goods we could sell. ~ Barack Obama

...the special interests are almost everybody. Everybody perceives they stand to lose if the economy is allowed to evolve. They are right if their special-interest favoritism is the only favoritism that is fixed. The result...is that nobody is giving up their favoritism. In these circumstances everybody loses... ~ William W. Lewis

Of course, the economy has not been working for most Americans. Yes, of course, we have special interests that are unfortunately doing too much to rig the game. ~ Hillary Clinton

I'm running for president because I've had enough of the oil barons, the status-quo apologists, the special-interest lobbyists running amok. ~ Dick Gephardt

More than one-third of congressional staffers turn to a career in lobbying after leaving Capitol Hill. It's clear the staffer-turned-lobbyist's value to special interests depends on the robustness of his or her network on Capitol Hill. According to an August 2010 study, when a lobbyist's former boss on Capitol Hill left office, the lobbyist's salary declined by an average of 50 percent in the six months following the departure.27 Moving from Capitol Hill to K Street isn't limited to staffers: In 2010, 37 percent of the newly out-of-office members of Congress went to work for lobbying firms or clients. After losing his run for Senate in 2006, Tennessee Democrat Harold Ford Jr. moved to New York to take a job with Merrill Lynch with a guaranteed annual compensation of $2 million. At the time he had no experience in finance. What he was paid for were his networks: ~ Christopher L. Hayes

Academia is alas full of special interests and specialists who presumed it was possible to "leapfrog" over this or that entire line of development. These minds hoped to distance themselves from the pernicious vices of a whole way of thinking, but of course at the same time excluded all of its virtues too. Modern abstractivism in its simplex form (which does not preclude a high degree of articulate facility within the ambit of what is preconceived and accepted). ~ Kenny Smith

The precise point at which a tax deduction becomes a 'loophole' or a tax incentive becomes a 'subsidy for special interests' is one of the great mysteries of politics. ~ John Sununu

Something terrible has happened to the soul of the Republican Party. We've gone from bad economic doctrine. We've even gone beyond selfishness and special interests. At this point we're talking about a state of mind that takes positive glee in inflicting further suffering upon the already miserable. ~ Paul Krugman

What's amazing to me? General Electric has a bigger budget for - special interest budget than all of the oil companies combined, and yet nobody says anything. ~ Glenn Beck

(Howard Dean) is proving that the Internet is a better, cheaper, and faster way to raise money than the old glad-handing of special interests and fat cat donors. He's also about to demonstrate that the Internet is a better place to spend campaign dollars than are TV stations and media time buys. The fact that Internet communications is free makes one-on-one retail politics more effective, more rapid, and less costly than mass communication. ~ Dick Morris

Feel me now, picture my pain, embrace my words, make the world change. ~ Tupac Shakur

Markets respond not to political pressures channeled through various committees, subcommittees, lobbies, and special interests but to the immediacies and exigencies of the economy - in other words, what's happening now. ~ Joel Miller

If there was special interests affecting police work, I believe that would be called corruption. So, if it has do with donating money versus a popular vote, I think we have a bigger problem in this country and somebody's gotta wake up to that. ~ Garry McCarthy

The political antagonisms of today are not controversies over ultimate questions of philosophy, but opposing answers to the question how a goal that all
acknowledge as legitimate can be achieved most quickly and with the least sacrifice.
This goal, at which all men aim, is the best possible satisfaction of human wants; it is prosperity and abundance. Of course, this is not all that men aspire to, but it is all that they can expect to attain by resort to external means and by way of social cooperation. The inner blessings - happiness, peace of mind, exaltation - must be sought by each man within himself alone.
Liberalism is no religion, no world view, no party of special interests. It is no religion because it demands neither faith nor devotion, because there is nothing mystical about it, and because it has no dogmas. It is no world view because it does not try to explain the cosmos and because it says nothing and does not seek to say anything about the meaning and purpose of human existence. It is no party of special interests because it does not provide or seek to provide any special advantage whatsoever to any individual or any group. It is something entirely different. It is an ideology, a doctrine of the mutual relationship among the members of society and, at the same time, the application of this doctrine to the conduct of men in actual society.
It promises nothing that exceeds what can be accomplished in society and through society. It seeks to giv ~ Ludwig Von Mises

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