"Let's say I'm on the policy wonk..." - Quote by Barack Obama
Let's say I'm on the policy wonk end of the spectrum. As much as I can dive into a briefing book and really work to master various subjects that come before my desk, I'm still not an expert on a huge amount of the stuff that we work on.
More by Barack Obama
“We need earmark reform, and when I'm President, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely.”
“They will tell you that the Americans who sleep in the streets and beg for food got there because they’re all lazy or weak of spirit. That the inner-city children who are trapped in dilapidated schools can’t learn and won’t learn and so we should just give up on them entirely. That the innocent people being slaughtered and expelled from their homes half a world away are somebody else’s problem to take care of.”
“None of this is fair to you. And should it continue, it will make it more difficult to keep attracting the kind of driven, patriotic, idealist Americans to public service that our citizens deserved and that our system of self-government demands.”
More on Expertise
“Every man is a revolutionist concerning the thing he understands. For example, every person who has mastered a profession is a skeptic concerning it, and consequently a revolutionist.”
“I'm pretty good at sticking to what I know. You don't see me social commentating on health-care or presidential debates. I talk about what I know because I'm petrified of being wrong.”
“Experts often possess more data than judgment.”
More on Policy
“I have asked the secretary of the treasury to report by April 1 on whether present tax laws may be stimulating in undue amounts the flow of American capital to the industrial countries abroad through special preferential treatment.”
“I actually believe in redistribution (of wealth)”
“I think that society has to be careful not to shift all of its resources to the elderly versus the young.”