Joan Claybrook quotes

There is nothing beyond the reach of ordinary citizens doing the daily work of democracy, and no problem too great to tackle with the power of active citizenship.
-- Joan Claybrook

#Democracy #Ordinary #Citizens

Leaks are good. There is too much secrecy in our government. Sometimes the government knows about a problem and it takes a leak to embarrass the bureaucracy and get them to do something about it.
-- Joan Claybrook

#Government #Too Much #Problem

It's malarkey. When you tell people that the roof crushing in on your head is not the cause of injury, it's your head hitting the roof, it's laughable.
-- Joan Claybrook

#Crush #People #Hitting

My critique of democracy begins and ends with this point. Kids must be educated to disrespect authority or else democracy is a farce.

Democracy is constructed like an edifice, freedom by freedom, right by right, until it reaches its snapping point.

We have declared a bitter war against the principle of democracy and all those who seek to enact it.

We will not let terrorists change our way of life; we will not live in fear; and we will not undermine the civil liberties that characterize our Democracy.

As citizens of this democracy, you are the rulers and the ruled, the law-givers and the law-abiding, the beginning and the end.

A good poem is a tautology. It expands one word by adding a number which clarify it, thus making a new word which has never before been spoken. The seedword is always so ordinary that hardly anyone perceives it. Classical odes grow from and or because, romantic lyrics from but and if. Immature verses expand a personal pronoun ad nauseam, the greatest works bring glory to a common verb. Good poems, therefore, are always close to banality, over which, however, they tower like precipices.

Like many works of literature, Hollywood chooses for its villains people who strive for social dominance through the pursuit of wealth, prestige, and power. But the ordinary business of capitalism is much more egalitarian: It's about finding meaning and enjoyment in work and production.

Don't ever forget that you're a citizen of this world, and there are things you can do to lift the human spirit, things that are easy, things that are free, things that you can do every day. Civility, respect, kindness, character.

The State claims and exercises the monopoly of crime. It forbids private murder, but itself organizes murder on a colossal scale. It punishes private theft, but itself lays unscrupulous hands on anything it wants, whether the property of citizen or of alien.

In the Federal Government, electronic records are as indispensable as their paper counterparts for documenting citizens' rights, the actions for which officials are accountable, and the nation's history.