Quotes About Policy

Those were the ideals that drove us to nationalization of the health service.

What we have to do is strike a balance between the idea that government should do everything and the idea, the belief, that government ought to do nothing. Strike a balance.

Medical professionals, not insurance company bureaucrats, should be making health care decisions.

Arguments can always be found to turn desire into policy.

Between policy-makers in the capital and realities in the field lies an eternal gap whitened by the bones of failed and futile efforts.

The policy of the victors after World War II in contrast to the Treaty of Versailles and the reparations exacted after World War I is an actual case of learning from experience and putting what was learned into practice—an opportunity that does not often present itself. The occupation of Japan according to a post-surrender policy drafted in Washington, approved by the Allies and largely carried out by Americans, was a remarkable exercise

To qualify as folly for this inquiry, the policy adopted must meet three criteria: it must have been perceived as counter-productive in its own time, not merely by hindsight. This is important, because all policy is determined by the mores of its age. "Nothing is more unfair," as an English historian has well said, "than to judge men of the past by the ideas of the present

Policy was not reconsidered because the governing group had no habit of purposeful consultation.

government, in the words of one of the group, J. K. Galbraith, was rarely more than a choice between "the disastrous and the unpalatable.

folly when it is a perverse persistence in a policy demonstrably unworkable or counter-productive. It

Washington's incessant need for NEW assessments testifies to uncertainty in the capital.

The hypothetical has its charm, but actual government is history.

Moltke closed upon that rigid phrase, the basis for every major German mistake, the phrase that launched the invasion of Belgium and the submarine war against the United States, the inevitable phrase when military plans dictate policy—"and once settled it cannot be altered.

had said, "The greatest contribution Vietnam is making … is developing an ability in the United States to fight a limited war, to go to war without arousing the public ire.

Hubert Humphrey advised new members, "If you feel an urge to stand up and make a speech attacking Vietnamese policy, don't make it.

The fact-finding mission was now the traditional Washington substitute for policy.

Exhaustion and exasperation are frequently the handmaidens of legislative decision.

Environmental pollution is an incurable disease. It can only be prevented.

By adopting the control strategy, the nation's environmental program has created a built-in antagonism between environmental quality and economic growth.

The failure to endow Treasury and the Fed with the authority to deal with the insolvency of a nonbank financial institution was the single most important policy failure of the crisis.

The best way to support the troops is to not send them off to die in the first place. And the second best way to support them only to send them off to die when you absolutely have to. And the only way to know that you've done that is to talk about it, debate it, examine it, and make damn sure.

For a nation that is expressing great concern over its "economic growth," I cannot conceive of a more absurd and self-defeating policy than one which subsidizes non-production.

The government is, in fact, urging you to pray. That's simply not government's job.

The politician being interviewed clearly takes a great deal of trouble to imagine an ending to his sentence: and if he stopped short? His entire policy would be jeopardized!