Initiative Quotes

During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. (Al Gore)
The man whose life is devoted to paperwork has lost the initiative, He is dealing with things that are brought to his notice, having ceased to notice anything for himself. View quote
C. Northcote Parkinson
Only the player with the initiative has the right to attack. View quote
Wilhelm Steinitz
It is imperative to take the initiative, to build firewalls around Alberta, to limit the extent to which an aggressive and hostile federal government can encroach upon legitimate provincial jurisdiction. View quote
Stephen Harper
America's downgrade may serve as a wakeup call for its policymakers. It is an unambiguous and loud signal of the country's eroding economic strength and global standing. It renders urgent the need to regain the initiative through better economic policymaking and more coherent governance. View quote
Mohamed El-Erian
No one should suffer from the great delusion that any form of communism or socialism which promotes the dictatorship of the few instead of the initiative of the millions can produce a happier or more prosperous society. View quote
Charles E. Wilson
Local innovation and initiative can help us better understand how to protect our environment. View quote
Gale Norton
Government control gives rise to fraud, suppression of Truth, intensification of the black market and artificial scarcity. Above all, it unmans the people and deprives them of initiative, it undoes the teaching of self-help. View quote
Mahatma Gandhi
The nature of encounter operations required of the commanders limitless initiative and constant readiness to take the responsibility for military actions. View quote
Georgy Zhukov
Just as the process of repealing national alcohol prohibition began with individual states repealing their own prohibition laws, so individual states must now take the initiative with respect to repealing marijuana prohibition laws. View quote
George Soros
A lot of people never use their initiative because nobody told them to. (Banksy)
At the age of nineteen, on my own initiative and at my own expense, I raised an army by means of which I restored liberty to the republic, which had been oppressed by the tyranny of a faction. For which service the senate, with complimentary resolutions, enrolled me in its order... View quote
Augustus
Nowadays there is more dynamism in chess, modern players like to take the initiative. Usually they are poor defenders though. View quote
Boris Spassky
The European policy is invariably the maintenance of the status quo, and you will do nothing for the subject races unless we, by taking initiative, make you realize that helping us against the Turks is the lesser of the evils. View quote
Eleftherios Venizelos
I'm asking Congress to pass my Zero Down Payment Initiative. We should remove the 3 percent down payment rule for first time home buyers with FHA-insured mortgages. View quote
George W. Bush
State intervention in economic production arises only when private initiative is lacking or insufficient, or when the political interests of the State are involved. This intervention may take the form of control, assistance or direct management. View quote
Benito Mussolini
The State always moves slowly and grudgingly towards any purpose that accrues to society's advantage, but moves rapidly and with alacrity towards one that accrues to its own advantage; nor does it ever move towards social purposes on its own initiative, but only under heavy pressure, while its motion towards anti-social purposes is self-sprung. View quote
Albert Jay Nock
Considering mankind's indifference to freedom, their easy gullibility and their facile response to conditioning, one might very plausibly argue that collectivism is the political mode best suited to their disposition and their capacities. Under its regime, the citizen, like the soldier, is relieved of the burden of initiative and is divested of all responsibility, save for doing as he is told. View quote
Albert Jay Nock
Political and social justice requires, not the disintegration of a country and destruction or humiliation of a class which shows initiative, intelligence and drive, but equality of opportunity for all, genuine freedom for self-fulfilment, in which all men irrespective of caste or creed may share. View quote
Syama Prasad Mookerjee
The fall of Empire, gentlemen, is a massive thing, however, and not easily fought. It is dictated by a rising bureaucracy, a receding initiative, a freezing of caste, a damming of curiosity - a hundred other factors. It has been going on, as I have said, for centuries, and it is too majestic and massive a movement to stop. View quote
Isaac Asimov
I am firmly opposed to the government entering into any business the major purpose of which is competition with our citizens... for the Federal Government deliberately to go out to build up and expand... a power and manufacturing business is to break down the initiative and enterprise of the American people; it is the destruction of equality of opportunity amongst our people, it is the negation of the ideals upon which our civilization has been based. (Herbert Hoover)
Students must have initiative; they should not be mere imitators. They must learn to think and act for themselves - and be free. View quote
Cesar Chavez
A theatre receives recognition through its initiative, which is indispensable for first-rate performances. View quote
Franz Liszt
Religion, it stops people from thinking because they think all the answers are in that one book; it impedes progress; it justifies crazy people. Flying planes into a building was a faith-based initiative. View quote
Bill Maher
Either the State for ever, crushing individual and local life, taking over in all fields of human activity, bringing with it its wars and its domestic struggles for power, its palace revolutions which only replace one tyrant by another, and inevitably at the end of this development there is ... death! Or the destruction of States, and new life starting again in thousands of centers on the principle of the lively initiative of the individual and groups and that of free agreement. The choice lies with you! View quote
Peter Kropotkin