Jonathan Alter famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

The price of loyalty is incompetence.
-- Jonathan Alter

#Loyalty #Government #Incompetence
Millions of Americans would still despair in the eight long years of the Depression that lay ahead and many of their individual dreams would be dashed on the rocks of economic hardship. But collectively, the country was in a new place, with a new confidence that the federal government would actively try to solve problems rather than fiddle or cater to the rich. Hope was no longer for Pollyannas; the cynics about the American system were in retreat.
-- Jonathan Alter

#Country #Dream #Eight
Almost no one under 60 remembers what fundraising was like before Watergate. Until the 1970s, campaign money was collected by "bagmen," familiar characters from the world of organized crime. As fans of Boardwalk Empire know, a bagman is a political fixer who walked around with stacks of $100 and $1,000 bills. At lower levels, he used brown paper bags. In presidential campaigns, the cash was more likely to be in briefcases. Classier that way.
-- Jonathan Alter

#Character #Fundraising #Political
Obama was willing to compromise and Republicans were not. That's not a biased statement. One of my problems with the limitations of journalism is that straightforward descriptions of reality are seen as being biased.
-- Jonathan Alter

#Reality #Journalism #Compromise
By laying the groundwork for a system centered on home ownership rather than the public housing popular in Europe, the New Deal made possible the great postwar housing boom that populated the Sun Belt and boosted millions of Americans into the middle class, where, ironically, they often became Republicans.
-- Jonathan Alter

#Home #Europe #Class
I think it's a terrible system, but money in politics is like water running downhill -- it finds its way.
-- Jonathan Alter

#Running #Thinking #Water
The only reason the House hasn't done even more damage is that the Senate often sands down the most noxious ideas, making the bills merely bad, not disastrous.
-- Jonathan Alter

#Ideas #House #Done
Every patient reacts a little differently, both biologically and psychologically. The only constant in cancer is inconstancy; the only certainty is a future of uncertainty, a truism for all of modern life but one made vivid by life-threatening illness.
-- Jonathan Alter

#Cancer #Modern Life #Littles
Unless the digital divide is narrowed soon, the United States may be headed to the class warfare of a century ago, the last time the economy changed so fundamentally. It won't be pleasant.
-- Jonathan Alter

#Class #United States #Warfare
The only thing worse than a silly politician analyzing art is a silly artist analyzing politics
-- Jonathan Alter

#Art #Silly #Analyzing
Logic can convince but only emotion can motivate.
-- Jonathan Alter

#Emotion #Logic #Convince
If it's easy for the government to learn about us, it should be easier for us to learn about the government, what they're doing.
-- Jonathan Alter

#Government #Easy #Easier
If Franz Kafka were alive today he'd be writing about customer service.
-- Jonathan Alter

#Writing #Live For Today #Alive
The key to fixing education is better teaching, and the key to better teaching is figuring out who can teach and who can't.
-- Jonathan Alter

#Education #Teaching #Keys
In the press grandstand where I watched Discovery rise against the cloudless sky, the media hit the abort button on cynicism. The Earth shook to the sounds of man, three miles away. The candle lit. . . only someone stripped of awe can leave a launch untouched.
-- Jonathan Alter

#Men #Media #Sky
It sometimes takes a while for executives to figure out that the reporters they think of as little bugs to be squashed or spun can be more powerful than they are.
-- Jonathan Alter

#Powerful #Thinking #Littles
The basic problem is with the business model of journalism. That business model is premised on the idea that talk is cheap and reporting is expensive.
-- Jonathan Alter

#Ideas #Journalism #Problem

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