Zephyr Teachout Quotes
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This is what's so hard about our current politics: things poll well, but people don't believe that politicians are telling the truth.
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Things poll well, but people don't believe that politicians are telling the truth. Politicians might mention renewable energy, and the public will think, "That sounds good, but I don't believe they're going to do everything they can to build those towers."
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A combination of working in politics as well as teaching and being [an actor] certainly helped. I became so much more comfortable in front of a crowd. I felt like I was calling on all those other experiences.
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I think the reason you see so many people dropping out of politics is because there's an anti-poetic strain in modern political discourse.
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You can have very big local government. By big, I mean very engaged government. Do you measure it in terms of the number of laws? Number of employees? You could make arguments for either one. I tend to think the axis of the size of government is the wrong concern. But I do think that situating power more locally is a legitimate approach.
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You can't just provide power, you also need public education.
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What happens in New York affects national policy in very significant ways.
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There's a tendency, especially among academics, to see politics as deeply dirty and deeply egotistical.
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I feel much more comfortable in politics than I did in book writing. Book writing is so hard. Politics felt easy compared to that.
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Having more candidates come with a creative and artistic sensibility would actually bring more people out to vote.
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One of the most dangerous things about Fox News isn't that it's right wing but that it's nihilistic. It takes away the capacity to believe in politics.
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There is a long American tradition of suspicion of concentrated economic power because of its tendency to corrupt government and turn it from a democracy into a plutocracy.
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I tend to think that knowledge is preceded by power instead of the other way around.
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Creativity is essential to any kind of joyful living. Sometimes I act, sometimes I draw, I paint, I write poems. I can't imagine living without it.
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If you think art is a competitive forum, then you're going to stop doing it if you're not good. But if it's not competitive, it's something that you'll keep doing.
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I tend to be a kind of left federalist. There's a value to more power of certain kinds being positioned at a more local level.