Quote

I think a lot of the reason people are attracted to the Keystone pipeline is because at least we're doing something. There's a fear that society will collapse if it's not acting. To contrast those actions with other actions is important in making it feel plausible. Maybe we must have the size of the dream meet the size of the threat.

Zephyr Teachout

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Zephyr Teachout
Age: 53
Born: 1971
Born: October 24
Journalist
Law Professor
Politician
Seattle
Washington
Zephyr Rain Teachout
Zephyr R. Teachout
Least
Plausible
People
Reason
Maybe
Attracted
Feel
Collapse
Must
Acting
Contrast
Feels
Society
Actions
Important
Making
Threat
Keystones
Something
Fear
Size
Keystone
Think
Action
Meet
Pipeline
Thinking
Dream

More quotes by Zephyr Teachout

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There's a tendency, especially among academics, to see politics as deeply dirty and deeply egotistical.
Zephyr Teachout
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You can't just provide power, you also need public education.
Zephyr Teachout
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New York City is one of the most vulnerable cities in the world to climate change, so I see Keystone as the central threat to New York.
Zephyr Teachout
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You can have very big local government. By big, I mean very engaged government. Do you measure it in terms of the number of laws? Number of employees? You could make arguments for either one. I tend to think the axis of the size of government is the wrong concern. But I do think that situating power more locally is a legitimate approach.
Zephyr Teachout
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A lot of politics plays at the level of myth, and if you understand that, then you feel like you have access to the secret language of politics.
Zephyr Teachout
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Oftentimes people get it wrong when they say we need to educate voters first and then give them power. I tend to favor giving them power first.
Zephyr Teachout
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There are some libertarians who are really anarchists, but others are more concerned about the distant relationship between themselves and power. They mistakenly think they want to get rid of government when instead they might just want to have greater access to power.
Zephyr Teachout
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My current goal is to change the way we think about antitrust and anti-monopoly.
Zephyr Teachout
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I think that most people have deeply creative sensibilities.
Zephyr Teachout
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Integrity is hard work. I do think the Internet makes it harder because of the temptations of performance. You can perform and have integrity, but it's easier just to perform.
Zephyr Teachout
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I think part of the reason the Tea Party has resonated is that people feel disempowered. The Tea Party says, You are out of power because of big government. Then some Democrats tend to respond by saying, No, you're wrong, you're not out of power. It's a sense that doesn't resonate with people's lived experience.
Zephyr Teachout
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A combination of working in politics as well as teaching and being [an actor] certainly helped. I became so much more comfortable in front of a crowd. I felt like I was calling on all those other experiences.
Zephyr Teachout
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Things poll well, but people don't believe that politicians are telling the truth. Politicians might mention renewable energy, and the public will think, That sounds good, but I don't believe they're going to do everything they can to build those towers.
Zephyr Teachout
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It's a lot harder to push forward things, like energy policy. There's a big dream out there about wind and solar power.
Zephyr Teachout
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Public education is so important - resisting privatization and charterization, high-stakes testing, and defunding. It's important for New York, but it's also important for the country.
Zephyr Teachout
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I tend to think that knowledge is preceded by power instead of the other way around.
Zephyr Teachout
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I think the reason you see so many people dropping out of politics is because there's an anti-poetic strain in modern political discourse.
Zephyr Teachout
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As a school board member, I might have particular views about the ways we might increase the economics curriculum in a local high school, but I'm not sure I should mandate that for the entire country.
Zephyr Teachout
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A lot of politics plays at the level of myth, and if you understand that, then you feel like you have access to the secret language of politics. People respond to political characters in archetypal ways. A fun game is to think of a politician and ask, Which god is that? Are they like Aries? Are they like Athena?.
Zephyr Teachout
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I'm not from the arts, I'm a law professor. But I think we need more poetry in politics.
Zephyr Teachout