Political Will Quotes

We know the problems, and we know the solution: sustainable development. The issue is the political will.

The more we understand what is happening in the world, the more frustrated we often become, for our knowledge leads to feelings of powerlessness. We feel that we are living in a world in which the citizen has become a mere spectator or a forced actor, and that our personal experience is politically useless and our political will a minor illusion.

Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.

Globalization could be the answer to many of the world's seemingly intractable problems. But this requires strong democratic foundations based on a political will to ensure equity and justice.

We need the political will, and that often comes from the will of the people. So if celebrities or personalities can help to educate the people - not influence them, not tell them (what to do) - just tell them the truth about what's happening and let them form their own opinion, that will strengthen them and they will push their politicians.

Refugee problems may often seem intractable but they are not insoluble. In our experience there are two basic prerequisites for solution: the political will of leaders to tackle the causes and to settle for peace, and international determination to push for peace and then to consolidate it. Consolidating peace means helping societies emerging from war to reintegrate refugees in safety and dignity, to rebuild their institutions - including in the field of justice and human rights - and to resume their economic development.

If world leaders decide to [meet the Millennium Development Goals], I think it can be done by 2015...The question is, is there a political will to make this investment?

I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.

The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

An honest politician is one who when he is bought will stay bought.

Politics has become so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to be defeated.

It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong.

I first got involved with ending world hunger, and I got hip to the facts about it - what a huge problem it was and how it wasn't a matter of not having food or not knowing how to end it, but it was a matter of creating the political will.

The good news is that we've seen in recent years significant reductions in the cost of solar panels and wind production. We know how significant an impact we can have by moving towards energy efficiency and transforming our transportation system. So we know what has to be done. We have to develop the political will to do it, and, as president, this would be an issue of huge concern to me.

In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant.

Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you!

Technology, under all circumstances, leads to planning; in its higher manifestations it may put the problems of planning beyond the reach of the industrial firm. Technological compulsions, and not ideology or political will, will require the firm to seek the help and protection of the state.

Winston Churchill aroused this nation in heroic fashion to save civilisation in World War Two. We have everything we need except political will, but political will is a renewable resource.

For achieving good governance political will is necessary. Good governance is a political process. Though role of civil society is critical, without political will and political process, sustainable good governance cannot be achieved.

A politician is a fellow who will lay down your life for his country.

This country has gotten where it is in spite of politics, not by the aid of it. That we have carried as much political bunk as we have and still survived shows we are a super nation.

No other chancellor in the long history of the office has felt the need to pass a law in order to convince people he has the political will to implement his own Budget.

As president, the first thing I will do is secure the border. It will take money, manpower, and technology - but most of all, it will take political will.

There ought to be one day - just one - when there is open season on senators.

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.

[President Johnson] had the political will to say that having one in five Americans living in the kind of abject conditions their fellow citizens associated with Third World countries and the novels of Dickens was as dangerous as any battlefield enemy.

Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

A convention on the comprehensive ban of nuclear weapons should be negotiated. Since biological and chemical weapons have been prohibited, there is no reason why nuclear weapons, which are more destructive, should not be comprehensively banned and thoroughly destroyed. All it takes to reach this objective is strong political will.

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

With good planning, Africa can have cities, farms, factories, export processing zones. But if the political will is there, the huge areas - the Serengeti, the Okavango, the Kalahari, Kruger - these wonderful, huge places for wildlife could still be set aside and protected, and be treasures for humanity for many generations to come.

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.

Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.

Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.

Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.

The work of an intellectual is not to mould the political will of others; it is, through the analyses that he does in his own field, to re-examine evidence and assumptions, to shake up habitual ways of working and thinking, to dissipate conventional familiarities, to re-evaluate rules and institutions and to participate in the formation of a political will (where he has his role as citizen to play).

The American military will never lose the war in Iraqif lost, it will be lost by a lack of political will.

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

If we don't believe in free expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.

Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.

We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.

An ignorant person is one who doesn't know what you have just found out.

That Iran is willing to threaten Israel is wrong[. . . .] We pose no threat and if we are conducting nuclear research and development we are no threat to Israel. We have no intention of aggression against any country. [. . .] Today we announce to you that the political will of Iran is aimed at the negotiated settlement of the case and we dont want to aggravate the situation in our region[. . . .] We know that this issue can be settled in a constructive dialogue and we welcome that.

It is impossible not to recognise the Long March as one of the great triumphs of men against odds and men against nature. While the Red Army was unquestionably in forced retreat, its toughened veterans reached their planned objective with moral and political will as strong as ever... Their conviction had helped turn what might have been a terrible defeat into an arrival in triumph.

U.N. Women was created due to the acknowledgement that gender equality and women's empowerment was still, despite progress, far from what it should be. Transforming political will and decisions, such as the Member States creating U.N. Women, into concrete steps towards gender equality and women's empowerment, I think is one of the main challenges.

Yes, we've cut the maternal mortality rate in half, but far too many women are still denied critical access to reproductive health care and safe childbirth, and laws don't count for much if they're not enforced. Rights have to exist in practice - not just on paper. Laws have to be backed up with resources and political will. And deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.

He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.