Policy Influence Quotes

Policy, for the most part, has been made by white people in America, not by people of color.

The key to understanding the rise in inequality isn't technology or globalization. It's the power of the moneyed interests to shape the underlying rules of the market.

We know that when people are civically engaged, when they understand what their rights are, when they understand that in a democracy you can challenge governments, you can challenge policymakers, and you can... actually shape and form future policy, I think it changes the perception that a lot of young people have about where power is.

Liberal leadership exhausts its power to persuade the discontented and the have-nots to accept ballot-box disappointments or compromises if their victories are to be nullified and if elections are effective in shaping policy only when conservatives win.

I wanted to continue to be active on those things that I cared about when I was president where I could still have an impact.

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.

Politicians pay more attention to interest groups than to the public interest.

Men in prison are "civilly dead" and have no claim to any say in policy.

No adviser to a president is going to get his way all of the time, but at a minimum, that adviser should be able to defend the tilt of an administration's policy as if it were his own. If not, he should make room for those who can.

Naturally the common people don't want war. . . but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along. . .

People can change the volume, the location and the composition of their income, and they can do so in response to changes in government policies.

If the right to vote were expanded to seven year olds … its policies would most definitely reflect the ‘legitimate concerns’ of children to have ‘adequate’ and ‘equal’ access to ‘free’ french fries, lemonade and videos.

As a general rule, the United States government is run by lawyers who occasionally take advice from economists. Others interested in helping the lawyers out need not apply.

I'm not a policy wonk - I'm somewhere between being undecided and a surrogate.

White House officials acknowledge in broad terms that a president's time and public rhetoric are among his most valuable policy tools.

I'm not a lawyer I'm a kind of mouthpiece/activist type, though occasionally they shave me and stuff me into my Bar Mitzvah suit and send me to a standards body or the UN to stir up trouble. I spend about three weeks a month on the road doing completely weird stuff like going to Microsoft to talk about DRM.

Policy makers who have never served in the military continue to use the military to lead social change in this country.

I grew up outside of Washington D.C., a town in which the largest industry is government and in which almost everyone I knew was involved in creating policies which impact people across our country and around the globe.

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.

It's very nice to be a rebel saying, 'I stand on my principles,' but if in fact that's not going to have any impact on the policy, it may be principled, but it doesn't deliver the better outcome that the country needs.

Certainly Nancy Reagan had an extraordinary effect on her husband. I'm truly not sure that, say, Laura Bush had that much effect on the Bush administration. She certainly, you know, seems to be a nice person who I think the public likes. But I can't really put my finger on any huge impact she's had.

Think tanks are chiefly supposed to provide independent expertise to policymakers. But they also seek to be politically relevant.

If I could have anything - you know, and this is across the board for any presidential candidate - I would have a greater acknowledgment of history in our policy and in our affairs.

As a member of this court I am not justified in writing my private notions of policy into the Constitution, no matter how deeply I may cherish them.

I don't write policy for my government.