Richard Lamm
I do not believe you can have infinite population or economic growth in a finite world. We are living on the shoulders of some awesome geometric curves.
I suggest that those groups whose culture and values stress delayed gratification - education, hard work, success, and ambition - are those groups that succeed in America, regardless of discrimination.
We must recognize that all the civil rights laws in the world are not going to solve the problem of minority underachievement. Ultimately, blacks and Hispanics are going to have to see that their solution is largely in their own hands.
I believe a nation does not maximize its health care until it starts to ask the hard question: How can we prioritize our expenditures to buy the most health care for the most people? We should not apologize for rationing; we should promote it and advance it.
The bottom line is, until we're helping people to stop smoking, screening for breast cancer, giving Pap smears, giving prenatal care to pregnant women, we should not go into publicly paying for the artificial heart, which will benefit at great cost only a few people.
I've had some major disappointments. The quality of life in Denver is worse than when I took over, and I'm embarrassed about that. But I still put in 40 hours a week running Colorado.
If I wanted to be president of the United States, I'd run for the Senate in 1986. And I'm just not going to do it.
Aging bodies are fiscal black holes into which you can pour endless amounts of money.
It was almost a desecration to put a building on the Boulder Turnpike, which is now U.S.-36 and is almost backyards and even junkyards all the way up. We didn't have to put development just cheek to jowl all the way up to Boulder. There's enough room in Colorado! But we did.
Sprawl is the American ideal way to develop. I believe that what we're developing in Denver is in no appreciable way different than what we're doing in Los Angeles - did in Los Angeles and are still doing. But I think we have developed the Los Angeles model of city-building, and I think it is unfortunate.
All we know about the new economic world is that nations which train engineers will prevail over those which train lawyers. No nation has ever sued its way to greatness.Collection: Greatness
Peace is neither the absence of war nor the presence of a disarmament agreement. Peace is a change of heart.Collection: Peace
Let me offer you, metaphorically, two magic wands that have sweeping powers to change society. With one wand you could wipe out all racism and discrimination from the hearts and minds of white America. The other wand you could wave across the ghettoes and barrios of America and infuse the inhabitants with Japanese or Jewish values, respect for learning, and ambition. ... I suggest that the best wand for society and for those who live in the ghettoes and barrios would be the second wand.Collection: Ghetto
America with 4% of the world's population has 50% of the worlds lawyers .... tort lawyers love to point out that 1% of America's health care cost is used to pay malpractice insurance ... but most doctors practice defensive medicine to avoid malpractice litigation ... these costs are not included in the 1% number above.Collection: Doctors
The biggest challenge of public policy is to know when and how the world has changed. We are no longer an empty continent with endless absorptive capacity. We have a cash-wage economy that is having terrible problems finding jobs for its own people. The concern about immigration is not nativism but common sense.Collection: Jobs
I have no permanent enemies - only people I have yet to persuade.Collection: People