By their innocence and goodness, by their boundless capacity for forgiveness, and by the sheer power of their faith and hope, children redeem their parents, bringing out their best selves.
Cass SunsteinRead
When government programs fail, it is often because public officials are clueless about how human beings think and act.
Interpretation
Government failures often stem from a lack of understanding of human behavior by officials.
The quote highlights a critical issue in governance where the disconnect between public officials and the realities of human behavior leads to ineffective programs. It suggests that without insight into how individuals think and act, initiatives designed to serve them may not address their actual needs or behaviors, resulting in failure. This reinforces the importance of understanding human psychology in policy-making.
In practice
In a discussion about the effectiveness of new government initiatives in a town hall meeting.
By their innocence and goodness, by their boundless capacity for forgiveness, and by the sheer power of their faith and hope, children redeem their parents, bringing out their best selves.
If a company has acted badly, people want to punish it - not in order to deter future misconduct, but simply because they're outraged. And the more outraged they are, the more punishment they want to inflict.
If you look at a great city, one of its amazing features is that you're going to find all sorts of things that you might not specifically have chosen in advance. And they will change your day. Maybe your month. Maybe your whole life.
It can be easy and tempting, especially during a presidential campaign, to listen only to opinions that mirror and fortify one's own. That's not ideal, because it eliminates learning and makes it impossible for people to understand what they dismiss as 'the other side.'
Research shows that if people are talking and listening to like-minded others, they become more dogmatic, more unified, and more extreme. Personalized Facebook experiences are a breeding ground for misunderstanding and miscommunication across political lines and, ultimately, for extremism.
If the air quality is terrible in Los Angeles, if a particular university is unusually expensive, if crime is on the rise in Dallas, or if a company has a lot of recalled toys, transparency can spur change. Whenever public or private institutions have to answer to the public, their performance is likely to improve.
The United States will do what we must to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.
Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor.
Politics and morality are inseparable. And as morality's foundation is religion, religion and politics are necessarily related. We need religion as a guide. We need it because we are imperfect, and our government needs the church, because only those humble enough to admit they're sinners can bring to democracy the tolerance it requires in order to survive.
Populists and isolationists ignore the tangible benefits that have resulted from our active international role during the past half-century.
Truly, if you can't cover a five-car pile-up on Route 128, you should not be covering a presidential campaign.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.