We need to get beyond the politics of the moment, the deficit of the hour, the military count of the day, the numbers that rarely shape events. Our long-term interests must be in people and in the values of democracy and individual liberty.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of prioritizing long-term values and the well-being of people over short-term political calculations.
Bill Bradley's quote highlights the necessity of looking past immediate political concerns and focusing on enduring principles such as democracy and individual freedom. It critiques the tendency to dwell on the transient issues and numerical data that often dominate political discourse, urging a shift towards a genuine commitment to people's welfare and fundamental values that shape a better society.
In practice
This quote can be used in a political speech to advocate for policies that prioritize people's rights and long-term stability.
Why do we fully tax some kinds of income from capital, like interest and dividends; partially tax other kinds like capital gains; defer tax on other kinds, like IRAs; and impose no tax at all on still other types of capital income, like interest on municipal bonds? This simply is not rational. These distinctions don't have any inherent logic.
Respect your fellow human being, treat them fairly, disagree with them honestly, enjoy their friendship, explore your thoughts about one another candidly, work together for a common goal and help one another achieve it. No destructive lies. No ridiculous fears. No debilitating anger.
Becoming number one is easier than remaining number one.
Every time I have some moment on a seashore, or in the mountains, or sometimes in a quiet forest, I think this is why the environment has to be preserved.
Basketball can serve as a kind of metaphor for ultimate cooperation. It is a sport where success, as symbolized by the championship, requires that the dictates of community prevail over selfish impulses.
There has never been a great athlete who died not knowing what pain is.
Viewed as a means to the end of political freedom, economic arrangements are important because of their effect on the concentration or dispersion of power. The kind of economic organization that provides economic freedom directly, namely, competitive capitalism, also promotes political freedom because it separates economic power from political power and in this way enables the one to offset the other
Government ought to be as much open to improvement as anything which appertains to man, instead of which it has been monopolized from age to age, by the most ignorant and vicious of the human race. Need we any other proof of their wretched management, than the excess of debts and taxes with which every nation groans, and the quarrels into which they have precipitated the world?"
Term limits would cure both senility and seniority- both terrible legislative diseases.
In the end, that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope?
Politics - I don't know why, but they seem to have a tendency to separate us, to keep us from one another, while nature is always and ever making efforts to bring us together.
Close alliances with despots are never safe for free states.
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