David Graeber Quotes
'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.
Quotes to Explore
-
Don't taunt the alligator until after you've crossed the creek.
-
I like to do the splits onstage.
-
Ultimately, I'm not the most prolific person, but I've been doing this for a long time, and I keep on putting out music. The only thing that drives music is the people who are making it.
-
A statesman who keeps his ear permanently glued to the ground will have neither elegance of posture nor flexibility of movement.
-
Let's help those in prison maintain positive connections with their community. If we truly want re-entry to be successful, and we do, people need to come back to a place that still feels like home.
-
I don't think I've ever sent a text to Gordon Brown because I'm confident that he would absolutely have no idea how to receive it. He barely managed to master WordPerfect 4.1.
-
No sensible author wants anything but praise.
-
I think it is more a cautiousness that protects me from enthusiasm about things. I tend not to get excited. People perceive it as a scowl, which is fair enough.
-
I have a classic taste with a twist, because classic never goes away.
-
Well, I - you know, the scripture says that God works by faith. And you have to have faith. You have to have trust in God so that God can work.
-
I get up late, have an espresso, and immediately start work. I try to get roughly caught up on email before I leave the house, then if I need to write anything or review a complex deal, I do that, and then I head to the office and work on my top few priorities for the day. I try to schedule my meetings in the afternoon.
-
When people say to me 'what do you think of rap music?' my answer is there's no such thing. There's rap and there's music.
-
When I entered into office mid-recession, my No. 1 focus was Utah's economy. We set bold goals, and we've built one of the best-performing economies in the nation.
-
I changed that system in Florida when I was the Speaker of the House - I was the Minority Leader; I saw for 16 years the way a power system works.
-
The emperor is in the Church, not above the Church.
-
I've always had a passion for music, but I never saw me as a musician for a living. I never thought that I could make a living. It never dawned on me.
-
I was always more interested in story songs, things with a point of view... and things that informed me.
-
There is plenty of building material and more than enough manpower to make a decent home for every Cuban. But if we continue to wait for the golden calf, a thousand years will have gone by, and the problem will remain the same.
-
In tennis, a lot of parents are accused of driving their kids into tennis. I would say I'm the opposite: I drove my parents into it. They didn't take it that seriously until I was about 11 or 12 years old, when they realised I had an opportunity to go pro.
-
Big ideas, big ambitious projects need to be embedded within culture at a level deeper than the political winds. It needs to be deeper than the economic fluctuations that could turn people against an expensive project because they're on an unemployment line and can't feed their families.
-
Out of all my friends, I believe I'm the only kid whose dad made us work to cut rebars; we laid bricks in construction sites and did other real work every summer for minimum wage. Our dad said that it's important in the future that when we tell people to dig a hole, that you personally know how long it will take to dig that hole.
-
What works in a story is very different than what works in cinema. For example, dialogue in books: If you translate it too faithfully, it sounds a little stilted, because we often don't speak the way we speak in novels. Oral language is much punchier, shorter sentences.
-
There should be no inferiors and no superiors for true world friendship.
-
'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.
