Issues quotes
4.2K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside issues — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"Women have always had equal importance onstage, and working with them must have altered my sensibilities. I've never felt sensitive to the whole issue, because being macho has never been a problem with me."
"Despite 18 years as a non-partisan public servant, my deeper "tribal" affinity has always been Tory. The Afghanistan file has given me an additional reason to cleave to that side of the spectrum. Canadian Conservatives have generally been more comfortable and confident with hard security issues."
"Adults have their own issues and their own problems, which are understandable, and some adults are working through their own adolescent issues.-"
"I'm a single-issue voter, to get straight to the point. I'm really only interested in the candidate who's toughest and least apologetic when it comes to the confrontation with Islamic Jihadism."
"I don't have any terrific self-esteem issues but I do sometimes realise I've been too lucky and that I'm over-praised. It makes me nervous. I have this sense of being overrated."
"One of the great questions of philosophy is, do we innately have morality, or do we get it from celestial dictation? A study of the Ten Commandments is a very good way of getting into and resolving that issue."
"Some of the people in my caucus, some of the people in the state party in Minnesota have basically said, "We don't want to deal with these guys because they're too conservative," or "We don't agree with them on social issues.""
"[Bernie] Sanders tapped into that [trade issues]; that was part of his support. And then when he didn't make it, some of those Sanders people went to [Donald] Trump."
"I heard a lot about the Affordable Care Act, too. About how people in the individual market were getting clobbered with all these increases, which is a legitimate issue."
"I always keep a firewall between my own travails and my perception of public-policy issues; otherwise I would retain no credibility as a commentator."
"Some people don't want to be morally consistent. They just want to be tied to their one issue."
"The problem is that affirmative action could never really get at the issue of corporate power in the workplace, and so you ended up with the downsizing; you ended up with de-industrializing. You ended up with the marginalizing of working people and working poor people even while affirmative action was taking place, and a new black middle class was expanding."
"So much has to do with going beyond treating black people as cosmetic and symbolic items, as opposed to genuine personalities and human beings. And that is a deep moral and spiritual issue, which can of course be backed up by Civil Rights Commissions which enforce the laws against any form of discrimination."
"I have some notions that have people conceiving of themselves as capable of changing the world. That's why, for me, the issues of self-love, self-respect and self-regard are preconditions for human agency and especially black agency, given the fact that we have been and are such a hated and despised people."
"Just days after Mitt Romney suggested he might run for president, there's been a backlash. The backlash is led by Jeb Bush, Mike Huckabee, and just to hedge his bets on every issue, Mitt Romney."
"Money's never an issue. I can go and work for a small studio theatre somewhere if it's a play I really care about, or do TV or a big commercial West End show."
"The more connected that individual is to an issue they care about, the higher probability there is they will stay involved over a longer period of time."
"I think I was the first executive to ever speak at a Greenpeace business conference, in London in 2001. That didn't play well here at Ford, but I thought it was an important signal to send internally, that these were the kind of issues we needed to be grappling with."
"I have not met [Donald] Trump and discussed any issues with him. There have been Republican administrations like the [George] Bush administration who initiated this AIDS generosity. So it's not purely a right-left thing."
"On land, you can walk away from people, from unpleasant situations. But when you're on a ship for 14 months with 49 other people, if you don't resolve your issues it literally could mean - and this would be an extreme circumstance - the sinking of the ship. You learn a lot about other people. You learn a lot about yourself."
