Policy

"Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle."

"Like Æsop's fox, when he had lost his tail, would have all his fellow foxes cut off theirs."

"They had best not stir the rice, though it sticks to the pot."

"Don't throw a monkey-wrench into the machinery."

"Policy doesn't advance in a vacuum."

"Policy is rather like the elephant – you recognise it when you see it but cannot easily define it."

""Policy" is the negation of politics; policy is by definition something concocted by some form of elite, which presumes it knows better than others how their affairs are to be conducted. By participating in policy debates the very best one can achieve is to limit the damage, since the very premise is inimical to the idea of people managing their own affairs."

"[Policy] is like a play in many acts, which unfolds inevitably once the curtain is raised. To declare then that the performance will not take place is an absurdity. The play will go on, either by means of the actors … or by means of the spectators who mount the stage…. Intelligent people never consider this the essence of the problem, however. For them it lies in the decision whether the curtain is to be raised at all, whether the spectators are to be assembled and in the intrinsic quality of the play."

"Turn him to any cause of policy, The Gordian knot of it he will unloose, Familiar as his garter: that, when he speaks, The air, a charter'd libertine, is still."

"To beguile the time, Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye, Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower, But be the serpent under 't."

"Policy-making, an attribute of sovereignty for which the government of the day is supposedly accountable to its people."

"Needless to say, policy-making is a terrain of intense conflicts of interest, and has nothing neutral about it. The question is, as always, which interest is being served by a particular policy. A question about which there can be neither neutrality nor non-partisanship."

"It's a bad idea to continue a policy that isn't working."

"We shall not I believe, be obliged to alter our policy of watchful waiting."

"We have stood apart, studiously neutral."

"Upholding human rights should underpin all policymaking."

"Mahomet made the people believe that he would call a hill to him, and from the top of it offer up his prayers for the observers of his law. The people assembled; Mahomet called the hill to come to him, again and again; and when the hill stood still, he was never a whit abashed, but said, "If the hill will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the hill.""

"It is better to walk than to run; it is better to stand than to walk; it is better to sit than to stand; it is better to lie than to sit."

"Masterly inactivity."

"When I see a merchant over-polite to his customers, begging them to taste a little brandy and throwing half his goods on the counter,—thinks I, that man has an axe to grind."

"The publick weal requires that a man should betray, and lye, and massacre."

"In a scheme of policy which is devised for a nation, we should not limit our views to its operation during a single year, or even for a short term of years. We should look at its operation for a considerable time, and in war as well as in peace."

"You have despoiled churches. You have threatened every corporation and endowment in the country. You have examined into everybody's affairs. You have criticised every profession and vexed every trade. No one is certain of his property, and nobody knows what duties he may have to perform to-morrow. This is the policy of confiscation as compared with that of concurrent endowment."

"There is no such thing as a fixed policy, because policy like all organic entities is always in the making."

"There is an eternal dispute between those who imagine the world to suit their policy, and those who correct their policy to suit the realities of the world."

"In the tragic days of Mussolini, the trains in Italy ran on time as never before and I am told in their way, their horrible way, that the Nazi concentration-camp system in Germany was a model of horrible efficiency. The really basic thing in government is policy. Bad administration, to be sure, can destroy good policy, but good administration can never save bad policy."