Selected policy quotes

1. Justice should be cheap but judges expensive.

2. The Assault Weapons Ban deals with a fictional distinction. You have guns that are exactly the same guns as are banned, in function, that were banned because of the way they look. And you know, that's the whole truth of this policy: it's to make politicians look as if they are doing something, when in point of fact, they are doing nothing.

3. The answer to crime is not gun control, it is law enforcement and self-control.

4. The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.

5. The wisdom of man never yet contrived a system of taxation that would operate with perfect equality.

6. Peace, above all things, is to be desired, but blood must sometimes be spilled to obtain it on equable and lasting terms.

7. If you suspend the Geneva Conventions, give the green light to anything that will get intelligence, round up thousands all over the globe with reckless disregard for guilt or innocence, you are effectively and knowingly issuing orders to seize innocent people and torture them. Any president who decides to do that and then says it was not his intention to do that is a fraud or a fool.

8. If freedom is to be saved and enlarged, poverty must be ended. There is no other solution.

9. Six imams removed from a US Airways flight from Minneapolis to Phoenix are calling on Muslims to boycott the airline. If only we could get Muslims to boycott all airlines, we could dispense with airport security altogether.

10. We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war.

11. I think there should be a literacy test and a poll tax for people to vote.

12. This is the way addled liberals really think. Even as they champion sucking the brains out of little babies, they think of themselves as indelibly compassionate because they favor an overweening, behemoth federal government.

13. It is proper that we acknowledge the overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty.

14. The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

15. There is just no sensible, logical reason why we would not make use of stem cell research.

16. We will submit legislation to the United States Senate which will...authorize the Congress to undertake judicial review of those signing statements with the view to having the president's acts declared unconstitutional.

17. American credibility in the war on terrorism depends on a strong stand against all terrorist acts, whether committed by foe or friend.

18. As a matter of traditional and sound constitutional doctrine, an amendment to the Constitution should be the last resort when all other measures have proved inadequate.

19. Heart disease continues to be the number one killer; cancer, the number 2 killer, not far behind. The tragic aspect of these deadly diseases is that they could all be cured, I do believe, if we had sufficient funding.

20. The fundamental purpose of government is to protect its citizens.

21. There is no doubt that our nation's security and defeating terrorism trump all other priorities.

22. It's amazing how much research has gone into making some of the worst decisions.

23. In a democracy, every little wrong idea may grow up to become national policy.

24. A good compromise, a good piece of legislation, is like a good sentence; or a good piece of music. Everybody can recognize it. They say, 'Huh. It works. It makes sense.'

25. Laissez Faire was very good sauce for the goose, labor, but was very poor sauce for the gander, capital.

26. Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.

27. They used to be seen as insane or unthinkable acts of madmen. But if they take place they'll be called 'war' too. And there will still be no conventional war.

28. While the collateral consequences of drugs such as cocaine are indisputably severe, they are not unlike those which flow from the misuse of other, legal, substances.

29. The extravagant expenditure of public money is an evil not to be measured by the value of that money to the people who are taxed for it.

30. Experience has shown that the trade of the East is the key to national wealth and influence.

31. Many of the points made by the antiwar movement have been consciously assimilated by the Pentagon and its lawyers and advisers. Precision weaponry is good in itself, but its ability to discriminate is improving and will continue to improve. Cluster bombs are perhaps not good in themselves, but when they are dropped on identifiable concentrations of Taliban troops, they do have a heartening effect.

32. I don't think the war in Afghanistan was ruthlessly enough waged.

33. There is no reason at all why there aren't enough people to guard New Orleans and to help stabilise Baghdad.

34. I feel it's so easy to condemn this country [the United States]; but they don't understand that this is where the mistakes are being made - and made first, so that we're going to get the answers first.

35. But in terms of Saddam Hussein being there, let's remember that his country is divided, in effect. He does not control the northern part of his country. We are able to keep arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt.

36. We are at war, and our security as a nation depends on winning that war.

37. I think the word of the United States has been as good as gold in its international dealings and its agreements.

38. I think there are many times when it would be most efficient to use nuclear weapons. However, the public opinion in this country and throughout the world throw up their hands in horror when you mention nuclear weapons, just because of the propaganda that's been fed to them.

39. See, when the GOVERNMENT spends money, it creates jobs; whereas when the money is left in the hands of TAXPAYERS, God only knows what they do with it. Bake it into pies, probably. Anything to avoid creating jobs.

40. The choice is not between drugs and no drugs, but between illegal drugs and legal drugs. Until the 1920s drugs were legal, why not now? Lots of people are on drugs anyway - it is called medication.

41. Economy is the first and great article (economy such as I understand it) in my financial creed. The controversy between direct and indirect taxation holds a minor, thought important place.

42. I mean this, that together with the so-called increase of expenditure there grows up what may be termed a spirit which, insensibly and unconsciously perhaps, but really, affects the spirit of the people, the spirit of parliament, the spirit of the public departments, and perhaps even the spirit of those whose duty it is to submit the estimates to parliament.

43. But how is the spirit of expenditure to be exorcised? Not by preaching; I doubt if even by yours. I seriously doubt whether it will ever give place to the old spirit of economy, as long as we have the income-tax. There, or hard by, lie questions of deep practical moment.

44. You should avoid needless and entangling engagements. You may boast about them, you may brag about them, you may say you are procuring consideration of the country. You may say that an Englishman may now hold up his head among the nations. But what does all this come to, gentlemen? It comes to this, that you are increasing your engagements without increasing your strength; and if you increase your engagements without increasing strength, you diminish strength, you abolish strength; you really reduce the empire and do not increase it. You render it less capable of performing its duties; you render it an inheritance less precious to hand on to future generations.

45. But this is quite different from Sweden, where the female-headed family rate is about equal to that of the United States, but poverty is not associated with family structure because Sweden you have a stronger family supports.

46. Good research clearly indicates that Americans would support affirmative action programs that capture the idea of equal opportunity.

47. Many of the government's actions aggravate rather than alleviate the stresses on ordinary families.

48. No other major Western democracy has such a weak family support program.

49. People talk about how busing exacerbated race relations without addressing the problems of black education.

50. The basic difference between the period after 1973 and the previous period is that the nation's equalizing institutions - unions, public education, the welfare state broadly defined - were much weaker in the present period.

51. The basic thesis of The Bridge Over the Racial Divide is that there is a growing inequality in American society, and ordinary families are, in effect, getting the short end of it.

52. There is some evidence that some New Deal programs in some of the states discriminated against blacks. But I have been sort of - I've been impressed overall with the relatively fair treatment that blacks received during the New Deal.

53. To say that integration caused the current problems of the black community ignores a whole host of other factors, including the willingness of America to tolerate schools that cripple kids.

54. What I did, you see, in The Truly Disadvantaged, as well as in When Work Disappears, I tried to demonstrate the importance of the environment in black life chances.

55. What Moynihan talked about back then is, I think is true today, and that is joblessness creates problem streams in the family. It leads to family break-ups resulting in an increasing number of families going on welfare.

56. Yes, there has been a really steady increase in income inequality since the early 1970s.

57. A nation trying to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to pull himself up by the handles.

58. Personally I am of the opinion that four assessments in three days is excessive, especially in an assessment-free week.

59. 'They say that as soon as the wall in Germany fell that the US government was busy building another one at the border between the US and Mexico. Since 1986 as a result of a lot of the hate talk and histeriam that the government of the United States has been speaking, 1500 bodies have been found on the border. We wrote this song in response to it. It's called Without a Face.'

60. 'NAFTA comin' with the new disaster'

61. ' Weapons not food, not homes not shoes, Not need just feed the war cannibal animal...[ From Bulls on Parade]'

62. We've spent a lot of blood and treasure here. We regard Iraq's success to be our success. And God forbid, Iraq's failure will also be ours.

63. And I just want to tell you this - we're in favor of a lot of things and we're against mighty few.

64. Ford's economics are the worst thing that's happened to this country since pantyhose ruined finger-fucking.

65. More people have probably died from eating dodgy Chinese food than contracting some form of avian flu. The last thing we want is for the Daleks from Defra to start suggesting that they want to exterminate wildlife-as is their normal response when confronted with such a problem. We do not want any proposal that migrating birds are going to be destroyed because of alarmist figures and notions that appear in the Tory press.

66. 'As I have chosen Fiji, having been born and raised here, as my home, indigenous Fijian aspirations and in particular, the protection of their rights to determine their own destiny, I believe, should always be paramount.'

67. 'In the same way that the Soviets' Sputnik satellite woke up the country to the need for math and science education, the outsourcing conversation cries out for a constructive, long-term solution that ensures Americans have world-class education, a world-class workforce and the ability to remain a competitive global leader.' (2004)

68. In order better to grasp the thought of Malthus, let us translate it into philosophical propositions by stripping it of its rhetorical gloss: - '''Individual liberty, and property, which is its expression, are economical data; equality and solidarity are not.' 'Under this system, each one by himself, each one for himself: labor, like all merchandise, is subject to fluctuation: hence the risks of the proletariat.' 'Whoever has neither income nor wages has no right to demand anything of others: his misfortune falls on his own head; in the game of fortune, luck has been against him.' From the point of view of political economy these propositions are irrefutable; and Malthus, who has formulated them with such alarming exactness, is secure against all reproach. From the point of view of the conditions of social science, these same propositions are radically false, and even contradictory.

69. Our foreign policy was an improvisation. Like Schacht's financial policy, it lacked foresight. The Nazis kept talking about a thousand-year Reich, but they couldn't think ahead for five minutes!

70. From government I want enough proximity to be defended by it and enough distance to not be harmed by it.

71. It seems to me that political parties or the state cannot, in any society, change human nature. We, however, could and should try to create a structure with which we disencourage the worse and bring about the good and natural sides of man and society.

72. 'Don't say I'm working for niggers. I'm not : 'Every Man a King' means every man, niggers along with the rest, but not especially for niggers.'

73. Criticizing the limitations of Roosevelt's New Deal: 'Not a single thin dime of concentrated, bloated, pompous wealth, massed in the hands of a few people, has been raked down to relieve the masses.'

74. Going back to Davies, at the time after the war that Davies was a member of the policy staff of the State Department, he had advised (this was under Dulles), that certain actions be taken, certain policies be pursued, which seemed alien to the simon-pure Communist haters.

75. The following are key elements of the proposed Zone of Ahimsa:

76. national resources and policy would be directed towards the active promotion of peace and environmental protection. Organisations dedicated to the furtherance of peace and to the protection of all forms of life would find a hospitable home in Tibet;

77. Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the National Territories, and to overrun us here in these Free States? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored - contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man - such as a policy of 'don't care' on a question about which all true men do care - such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance - such as invocations to Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington said, and undo what Washington did.

78. ...give dysgenic groups in our population their choice of segregation or sterilization.[1]

79. I should say that when people talk about capitalism it's a bit of a joke. There's no such thing. No country, no business class, has ever been willing to subject itself to the free market, free market discipline. Free markets are for others. Like, the Third World is the Third World because they had free markets rammed down their throat. Meanwhile, the enlightened states, England, the United States, others, resorted to massive state intervention to protect private power, and still do. That's right up to the present. I mean, the Reagan administration for example was the most protectionist in post-war American history. Virtually the entire dynamic economy in the United States is based crucially on state initiative and intervention: computers, the internet, telecommunication, automation, pharmaceutical, you just name it. Run through it, and you find massive ripoffs of the public, meaning, a system in which under one guise or another the public pays the costs and takes the risks, and profit is privatized. That's very remote from a free market. Free market is like what India had to suffer for a couple hundred years, and most of the rest of the Third World.

80. On the moral implications, the plans were reported on Feb. 14 in the front-page lead story in the New York Times. Two days earlier, the Times published a blistering review of Osama bin Laden's 'morally outrageous' pronouncements, which reached the ultimate depth of depravity in 2002, with a message that put forth 'the perverse claim that since the United States is a democracy, all citizens bear responsibility for its government's actions, and civilians are therefore fair targets.' The reviewer, law professor Noah Feldman, is correct in describing this as ultimate depravity. The Feb. 14 story, and subsequent ones, have provided details on how the US and Israel have adopted Osama's 'perverse claim,' descending to ultimate depravity, and are proceeding to implement it. The announced plans are intended to impose suffering and starvation on Palestinian civilians because they voted the wrong way, and to ensure that others do not come to their relief (the goal of a trip to the Middle East by Condoleezza Rice, according to the Times). We may also note that this is nothing new. Osama's 'perverse claim' has been official US policy for at least 45 years, often formulated in virtually his words.

81. First ship 'em dope & let 'em deal the brothers/give 'em guns step back watch 'em kill each other

82. Now for the remedy. It is in one word, the only word that ever brought equity anywhere - LIBERTY! Centuries upon centuries of liberty is the only thing that will cause the disintegration and decay of these pestiferous ideas. Liberty was all that calmed the bloodwaves of religious persecution! You cannot cure serfhood by any other substitution. Not for you to say 'in this way shall the race love.' Let the race alone. Will there not be atrocious crimes? Certainly. He is a fool who says there will not be. But you can't stop them by committing the arch-crime and setting a block between the spokes of Progress-wheels. You will never get right until you start right. As for the final outcome, it matters not one iota. I have my ideal, and it is very pure, and very sacred to me. But yours, equally sacred, may be different and we may both be wrong. But certain am I that with free contract, that form of sexual association will survive which is best adapted to time and place, thus producing the highest evolution of the type. Whether that shall be monogamy, variety, or promiscuity matters naught to us; it is the business of the future, to which we dare not dictate.

83. One wonders whether the ethnic categorization effort at finding solutions to problems that cross ethnic boundaries. Poverty is poverty is poverty. It does not have peculiar ethnic characteristics.

84. We need to try and focus less on ethnicity in this country and concentrate on trying to improve the lot of the marginalized whoever they are.

85. Back then (in 1985) the issue of the day was nuclear testing, now we are faced with problems such as climate change, overfishing, deforestation, shipments of radioactive materials through Pacific waters and nuclear proliferation. We need to remain vigilant so that we won't become victims again.

86. The critical element in this equation is developing inclusiveness that envelopes all these competing priorities (of the different ethnic groups) in a manner that is fair to all. Without it we risk remaining a divided society all the more tragic for having unfulfilled our potential.

87. However social integration cannot be forced and not proceed at the pace that the community considers uncomfortable.

88. A new era has begun in South Africa. My government is removing racial discrimination. We want to be accepted by our African brothers.

89. This refugee problem has been artificially maintained for political motives. Recent years have seen great expansion of Middle East economies, but the Arab governments have so far stopped the refugees from sharing this. The vast Arab world could find home for a million refugees. Speaking to the UN in 1958

90. When, early in the war, Gen. Fremont attempted military emancipation, I forbade it, because I did not then think it an indispensable necessity. When a little later, Gen. Cameron, then Secretary of War, suggested the arming of the blacks, I objected, because I did not yet think it an indispensable necessity. When, still later, Gen. Hunter attempted military emancipation, I again forbade it, because I did not yet think the indispensable necessity had come. When, in March, and May, and July 1862 I made earnest, and successive appeals to the border states to favor compensated emancipation, I believed the indispensable necessity for military emancipation, and arming the blacks would come, unless averted by that measure. They declined the proposition; and I was, in my best judgment, driven to the alternative of either surrendering the Union, and with it, the Constitution, or of laying strong hand upon the colored element. I chose the latter. In choosing it, I hoped for greater gain than loss; but of this, I was not entirely confident. More than a year of trial now shows no loss by it in our foreign relations, none in our home popular sentiment, none in our white military force, - no loss by it any how or any where. On the contrary, it shows a gain of quite a hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, seamen, and laborers. These are palpable facts, about which, as facts, there can be no cavilling. We have the men; and we could not have had them without the measure.

91. What al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein did was an extreme form of sadistic torture, the kind that psychopaths enjoy and inflict. But that does not make, say, freezing someone to near-death, reviving him, re-freezing him again any less torture. Yes, we did that, carefully monitored by Rumsfeld. It does not make the Khmer Rouge waterboarding technique any less torture. It does not make contorting a prisoner into an excruciating stress position and then smashing his head against the wall any less torture. We should not forget that there have been more than a hundred deaths in U.S.-run torture chambers under George W. Bush either. So I really don't get the point. Unless it is the following: If we are not as evil as al Qaeda, we are not torturing. This is logically and legally and morally a complete non-sequitur. And it is truly mind-boggling to believe that the arbiters of our moral compass are now the men who murdered 3000 innocents on 9/11. I don't know about you, but that's not the standard against which I believe America should judge herself. Or ever, ever has.

92. Torture gives false information. And the worst scenarios that tortured detainees coughed up - many of them completely innocent, remember - may well have come to fuel US national security policy. And of course they also fueled more torture. Because once you hear of the existential plots confessed by one tortured prisoner, you need to torture more prisoners to get at the real truth. We do not know what actual intelligence they were getting, and Cheney has ensured that we will never know. But it is perfectly conceivable that the torture regime - combined with panic and paranoia - created an imaginationland of untruth and half-truth that has guided US policy for this entire war. It may well have led to the president being informed of any number of plots that never existed, and any number of threats that are pure imagination. And once torture has entered the system, you can never find out the real truth. You are lost in a vortex of lies and fears. In this vortex, the actual threats that we face may well be overlooked or ignored, as we chase false leads and pursue non-existent WMDs.

93. How does America find its way in this new, global economy? What will our place in history be? Like so much of the American story, once again, we face a choice. Once again, there are those who believe that there isn't much we can do about this as a nation. That the best idea is to give everyone one big refund on their government-divvy it up by individual portions, in the form of tax breaks, hand it out, and encourage everyone to use their share to go buy their own health care, their own retirement plan, their own child care, their own education, and so on. In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society. But in our past there has been another term for it-Social Darwinism-every man or woman for him or herself. It's a tempting idea, because it doesn't require much thought or ingenuity. It allows us to say that those whose health care or tuition may rise faster than they can afford-tough luck. It allows us to say to the Maytag workers who have lost their job-life isn't fair. It let's us say to the child who was born into poverty-pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And it is especially tempting because each of us believes we will always be the winner in life's lottery, that we're the one who will be the next Donald Trump, or at least we won't be the chump who Donald Trump says: 'You're fired!' But there is a problem. It won't work. It ignores our history. It ignores the fact that it's been government research and investment that made the railways possible and the internet possible. It's been the creation of a massive middle class, through decent wages and benefits and public schools that allowed us all to prosper. Our economic dependence depended on individual initiative. It depended on a belief in the free market; but it has also depended on our sense of mutual regard for each other, the idea that everybody has a stake in the country, that we're all in it together and everybody's got a shot at opportunity. That's what's produced our unrivaled political stability.

94. Alcohol! Tastes great, I love it, you love it, we all love it. Kills motherfuckers every single day. Some of you all won't even make it home tonight 'cause of alcohol. You'll be like, 'Oh, that Chris Rock sure is funny, oh! Shit!' But it's all right 'cause it's all white. Cigarettes! Cigarette's the most dangerous product known to man. Kills motherfuckers every single day. Cigarette's so dangerous it kills motherfuckers that don't smoke. That's how dangerous cigarettes are. That's right, first hand smoke, second hand smoke. People talking out of their necks into a fucking machine like, 'Hey, what's up, man, I love cigarettes, this shit is cool.' But it's all right 'cause it's all white. Shit, could you imagine if the Phillip Morris family was a bunch of jheri-curled niggers from Mississippi? Do you know how illegal a pack of cigarettes would be? You would get sixty years just for a pack of Newports. But it's all right 'cause it's all white.

95. ...in fact, the war against Iraq is continuing. And it's continuing now by the means which the administration described as contemptible and useless, when they were put forth as an alternative to an actual all-out aerial bombardment. Namely, economic sanctions, which do have the effect of slowly starving and crippling the population of Iraq, while leaving the military cast of Saddam Hussein and his criminal Baath Party in charge. I was asked the other day ... why do you think the administration decided to spare Saddam Hussein ... and I said I think because they thought they might need him again...

96. ...those hostilities were not very well contained, as we found out on September 11th, and so the notion that somehow policies that finally confront extremism are actually causing extremism I find grotesque.

97. ...the consolidation of a stable and democratic Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein is a part of what America owes to the Iraqi people, owes to the region, and owes to ourselves so that our own security is there. Chris, it would be like saying that after Adolf Hitler was overthrown, we needed to change then the resolution that allowed the United States to do that so that we could deal with creating a stable environment in Europe after he was overthrown.

98. Now, six years ago, al-Qaida was planning to attack the Twin Towers. It wasn't a very nice world. And I think that if you think about six years ago, al-Qaida was preparing to attack the Twin Towers, Pakistan was allied with the Taliban, Afghanistan was the base from which al-Qaida was going to operate; the Israelis and the Palestinians had given up on a chance for -- or let me put it, the Palestinians had walked away from a chance for a Palestinian state, launched the second intifada, elected Ariel Sharon who basically said there would never be a Palestinian state and there will be a greater Israel; the North Korean were cheating on a deal that they had just signed; China and others were indifferent to that because it was a U.S.-North Korea bilateral deal; Iran was cheating on the IAEA out of sight. I could go on and on and on. That was the world in 2000 and 2001. And there is no doubt that by confronting -- oh, by the way, and Saddam Hussein was shooting at our pilots regularly in the no-fly zone and making a mockery of the Oil-for-Peace -- Oil-for-Food program and corruption was running rampant in that program. So, a worse world? I think so.

99. ...the idea that she belongs in front of a war tribunal is not something I can dignify with a response. Miss Rice presides over a wide range of choices, a wide range of policies. She's handled that vast duty with dignity, with honor...

100. We find our population suffering from old inequalities, little changed by vast sporadic remedies. In spite of our efforts and in spite of our talk, we have not weeded out the over privileged and we have not effectively lifted up the underprivileged. Both of these manifestations of injustice have retarded happiness. No wise man has any intention of destroying what is known as the profit motive; because by the profit motive we mean the right by work to earn a decent livelihood for ourselves and for our families. We have, however, a clear mandate from the people, that Americans must forswear that conception of the acquisition of wealth which, through excessive profits, creates undue private power over private affairs and, to our misfortune, over public affairs as well. In building toward this end we do not destroy ambition, nor do we seek to divide our wealth into equal shares on stated occasions. We continue to recognize the greater ability of some to earn more than others. But we do assert that the ambition of the individual to obtain for him and his a proper security, a reasonable leisure, and a decent living throughout life, is an ambition to be preferred to the appetite for great wealth and great power.