How can you make a revolution without executions?
Vladimir Lenin
A revolution is not an event. It's a process. And it takes its time.
In our view, successful reform is not an event. It is a sustainable process that will build on its own successes - a virtuous cycle of change.
We keep saying, 'No more 'band aid' solutions.'
I don't think we've asked the right questions, the tough questions, at the right time, in Washington.
Health care confronts us with a difficult test. We have never corrected failure in something so deeply embedded in people's lives and in the economy without the pressure of an outright crisis.
We must remember, elections are short-term efforts. Revolutions are long-term projects.
I'm not afraid to shake up the system, and government needs more shaking up than any other system I know.
We need to modernize an outdated agency, bring it into the 21st century, and ensure that the VA is better equipped to treat the health and psychological issues that are unique to our veterans.
In politics one should not expect big jumps. Everything takes time.
Not only are there no free lunches, but there are no free systemic changes either.
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.
My goal is to be able to speak to everyone in the country and to be able to make everyone in the country think differently about our political system.
All systems in Pakistan appear to be in a haste to achieve something, which can have both positive and negative implications. Let us take a pause and examine the two fundamental questions: One, are we promoting the rule of law and the Constitution? Two, are we strengthening or weakening the institutions?
If humanity has any hope of effecting real change for the better, it will not come from the Madison Avenue false reality makers who've cast Barack Obama as the savior of the world. To alter our course from tyranny to liberty, to defeat the corrupt elite, we must get past the puppets and confront the real power structure of the planet.
The reform [of the civil service] should be thorough, radical, and complete.
Piecemeal social engineering resembles physical engineering in regarding the ends as beyond the province of technology.
One of the things that has to be faced is the process of waiting to change the system, how much we have got to do to find out who we are, where we have come from and where we are going.
Most sports federations, corporations, and governments don't change voluntarily. Change is brought by the disenfranchised demanding better.
We need sensible people in the system, who are honest and passionate about the country and will not fall pray to corruption.
Governments do not like to face radical remedies; it is easier to let politics predominate.
People want the nation to transform in the same way they want their own lives to transform. If you're interested in transforming your life, you can't just transform some things. You can't try to fix some things, but sweep other things under the rug because it's too hard to face them. And the same is true for a nation.
The Soviet system is how everything here works. It's very difficult to break the system. The system is big and inflexible, uneffective, and also corrupt. And that is our main goal: to change the system, to break the system, to make it modern.
The why is what makes journalism an adult game. The why is what makes policy coherent and useful. The why is what transforms bureaucrats and foot soldiers and political leaders into viable instruments of rational and affirmative change. The why is everything and without it, the very suggestion of human progress becomes a cosmic joke.
Well, I have also believed in empowering the individual and believe there is a degree of inertia in big government that hampers the ability to respond to a rapidly evolving crisis.
