Pastoral Resources

I have done things politically, and I've been running a business at the same time, but I sort of joke that to some extent I do more than most legislators have done in their whole careers, and I've been doing it as a part-time job.

This source of corruption, alas, is inherent in the democratic system itself, and it can only be controlled, if at all, by finding ways to encourage legislators to subordinate ambition to principle.

When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people.

Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.

As attorney general, I can either look into it or I can ignore it because they're a bunch of powerful legislators... and I'm afraid they're going to cut my budget.

I've been not only articulating the dissatisfaction with Albany, I've been acting on it. I've been very aggressive in bringing public integrity cases and public corruption cases and bringing cases against sitting legislators.

We're going to march on Washington with a host of Republicans, Democrats, business leaders, legislators.

What is the harm of doing the right thing? What is the harm of doing our job as legislators and making sure we do not stick the entire bankruptcy community with these provisions that do not make any sense?

And, in the past, it has been all too easy for legislators to load costs onto business in order to meet broader social goals. And costs for business means costs for consumers.

We asserted ourselves as a music community, and showed legislators that music is positive. Especially if you've sold 300 million records worldwide and pay taxes.

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.

The acknowledged legislators of the world take the world as given. They dislike mysteries, for mysteries cannot be coded, or legislated, and wonder cannot be made into law. And so these legislators police the accepted frontiers of things.

Ideally citizens are to think of themselves as if they were legislators and ask themselves what statutes, supported by what reasons satisfying the criterion of reciprocity, they would think is most reasonable to enact.

People underestimate the impact they can have on the process through contact with legislators. By being part of an organized group in an area that you have an interest in, you can multiply the impact of your own ideas.

But do not understand me as saying, or for one moment suggesting, that women legislators should confine themselves to doing only social service work. Not at all.

It's not about the money. This is about Terri. It's not about the Schindlers, it's not about the legislators, it's not about me, it's about what Terri Schiavo wanted.

Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

The important thing to understand about legislators is that there are dozens of competing interests and issues that occupy them. They are stretched thin.

Let us tell our legislators in advance, that this is a right, restraints on which, we will not, cannot bear; and that every attempt to restrain it is a palpable wrong on God and man.

We live in a stage of politics, where legislators seem to regard the passage of laws as much more important than the results of their enforcement.