225 Quotations Found

Conservatism-under-liberalism should defend human goods that are threatened by liberal ideas taken to extremes. The family, when liberal freedom becomes a corrosive hyper-individualism. Traditional religion, when liberal toleration becomes a militant and superstitious secularism. Local community and local knowledge, against expert certainty and bureaucratic centralization. Artistic and intellectual greatness, when democratic taste turns philistine or liberal intellectuals become apparatchiks. The individual talent of the entrepreneur … [ Read more ]

Author: Ross Douthat | Source: The New York Times | Subject: Politics & Public Policy

One feels that among all the lessons which men require for carrying on the struggle against the inevitable imperfections of their lot on earth, there is no lesson which they more need, than not to add to the evils which nature inflicts, by their jealous and prejudiced restrictions on one another.

Author: John Stuart Mill | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Politics & Public Policy

For in the end, our society will be defined not only by what we create, but by what we refuse to destroy.

Author: John Sawhill | Subjects: Environment | Sustainability, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy

The Earth belongs in use to the living… No generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence.

Author: Thomas Jefferson | Subjects: Environment | Sustainability, Politics & Public Policy

Putting aside the reality that no system, including our own, is really entirely meritocratic, meritocracies may be fairer and more efficient than some alternatives. But fair in an absolute sense? Think about it. A meritocracy is a system in which the people who are the luckiest in their health and genetic endowment; luckiest in terms of family support, encouragement, and, probably, income; luckiest in their … [ Read more ]

Author: Ben Bernanke | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Economics | Economy, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy

In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.

Author: Confucius | Subjects: Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy

Taxes exist for many reasons, but they exist mainly to give value to a state’s otherwise worthless tokens.

Author: Stephanie Kelton | Source: The New York Times | Subjects: Economics | Economy, Politics & Public Policy, Taxation

…some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system.

Author: Pope Francis | Subjects: Economics | Economy, Politics & Public Policy

I must attempt to care as much for the world as for my household. Those are the poles between which a competent morality would balance and mediate: the doorstep and the planet. The most meaningful dependence of my house is not on the U.S. government, but on the world, the earth. No matter how sophisticated and complex and powerful our institutions, we are still exactly … [ Read more ]

Author: Wendell Berry | Subjects: Environment | Sustainability, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy

Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. […] Voice … [ Read more ]

Author: Hermann Goering | Subjects: Life & Society, Military | War | Peace, Politics & Public Policy

The fairest rules are those to which everyone would agree if they did not know how much power they would have.

Author: John Rawls | Subjects: Law | Legal, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy

It would almost appear that the very domain of human activity most crucial to the fate of nations is inescapably in the hands of wholly irresponsible political rulers. Political leaders or governments owe their power either to the use of force or to their election by the masses. They cannot be regarded as representative of the superior moral or intellectual elements in a nation.

Author: Albert Einstein | Subject: Politics & Public Policy

Look, the whole reason democracy exists as an institution is not that it will give us a good government. It doesn’t and won’t. Rather, the point is when choosing a ruler, it’s safer to vest power in the idiots than a tyrant because the idiots can’t manage to stay on task for more than a few minutes at a time. Democracies stagger from hither to … [ Read more ]

Author: Rocco Dooley, Jr. | Subject: Politics & Public Policy

The men […] people admire the most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.

Author: H.L. Mencken | Subjects: Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior

True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice, a structure, which produces beggars, needs restructuring.

Author: Martin Luther King Jr. | Subjects: Insight, Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Politics & Public Policy

Politics is a game of competing stories about a nation’s self-identity, and between differing symbols of its greatness.

Authors: Richard Rorty, Sean Illing | Subject: Politics & Public Policy

Sitting down at a table with a group of strangers has the incomparable and odd benefit of making it a little more difficult to hate them with impunity. Prejudice and ethnic strife feed off abstraction. However, the proximity required by a meal – something about handing dishes around, unfurling napkins at the same moment, even asking a stranger to pass the salt – disrupts our … [ Read more ]

Author: Alain de Botton | Subjects: Communication, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy, Relationships

But people start to wonder if our politics make sense
When religion is our best excuse for national defense
And when our citizens start saying that our wars are not okay
And Washington keeps telling them God loves the USA
And they teach us history so we can learn from our mistakes
And this generation wants to know how many years it takes
To change … [ Read more ]

Author: Griffin House | Subjects: History, Military | War | Peace, Politics & Public Policy, Religion

It is difficult to think of any politician who has lived to be eighty and still been regarded as a success. What we call a ‘great’ statesman normally means one who dies before his policy has had time to take effect. If Cromwell had lived a few years longer he would probably have fallen from power, in which case we should now regard him as … [ Read more ]

Author: George Orwell | Subjects: History, Politics & Public Policy

Democracy is designed as a feedback loop. Voters choose leaders. Leaders govern. Voters judge the results, and either return the leaders to power, or give their opponents a chance. That feedback loop is broken in American politics. It is broken because of gerrymandering, because of the Senate, because of the filibuster, because of the Electoral College, because we have declared money to be speech and … [ Read more ]

Author: Ezra Klein | Source: The New York Times | Subjects: America, International, Politics & Public Policy