Best And Brightest Quotes

#1. Invite the best and brightest to compete for a grand prize to come up with designs, including new zoning, building codes and so forth, for New Orleans that could make it safe from water, and let the state and city pick the plan that works best for Louisiana.

Billy Tauzin

#2. I have to hear this all the time in England: "Well, all Americans are fat and stupid, mm-hm-hm-hm-hm." Really? Well, thanks for sending over the best and brightest to start the party. Maybe we can send a few freaky, Texas, militia, hate-group, gun-toting weirdoes back to your country.

Greg Proops

#3. In today's economy there are no experts, no 'best and brightest' with all the answers. It's up to each one of us. The only way to screw up is to not try anything.

Tom Peters

#4. We must never forget that the settlement of what is now the United States was only part of a larger enterprise. And this was the work of the best and brightest of the entire European continent. They were greedy.

Paul Johnson

#5. The bottom line is that any business should be a meritocracy. The best and brightest. Period.

Billy Beane

#6. Time and again our best and brightest have alerted society to looming problems, but our persistent pattern has been to ignore the warnings and suffer the consequences. The pathetic refrain of recent years
'Nobody saw this coming'
is always a self-serving lie.

Eugene Linden

#7. Pell Grants aren't 'welfare,' they are a gateway to opportunity for some of our nation's best and brightest students.

Sheldon Whitehouse

#8. For no good reason, George W. Bush and the best and brightest he could muster, including the likes of Paul Bremer and Paul Wolfowitz, decided it made sense to attack Iraq.

Jay Parini

#9. This life is about progress, advancement, moving forward. It's becoming our very best and brightest selves.

Toni Sorenson

#10. On the Left, the best and brightest go into politics - Barack Obama is the epitome of the perfect leftist. On the Right, the best and brightest go make money. Very few conservatives want to endure all the nonsense you have to put up with to run for office.

Ted Cruz

#11. The survey findings reflect the growing trend toward incentive compensation programs as a way for employers to share the wealth with workers, ... Roughly 80 percent of those surveyed offer bonus programs and 401(k) or profit-sharing plans ... as they compete for the best and brightest workforce.

Jerry Jasinowski

#12. When your brain is always engaged, when your neurons are always firing, when you find yourself in a continual mode of reacting and responding, instead of steering and directing, the best and brightest solutions that you are capable of producing rarely see the light of day.

Jeff Davidson

#13. China cannot pull in the best and brightest from all over the world. It's an ethnically defined nation, the opposite of an immigrant nation. You don't see a lot of American engineers trying to be Chinese citizens.

Amy Chua

#14. The U.S. invaded Vietnam because many in our government - Lyndon Johnson's best and brightest - imagined it could impose a government on that country that would provide a buffer against China and stop the supposedly rolling dominos of Communism.

Jay Parini

#15. I believe we need to attract a new generation of the best and brightest to public service and I believe that government can be a source of inspiration, not degradation.

Andrew Cuomo

#16. Jeff Bezos was one of those best and brightest who came to N.Y. to work in finance. He didn't need to know anything about retail bookselling to start Amazon.

Jose Ferreira

#17. When I was superintendent of Denver Public Schools, I saw the potential of some of our best and brightest students cut short, punished for the actions of others - kids who had grown up and done well in our school system, and kids who know no other home but America. This is unacceptable.

Michael Bennet

#18. When people are judged by merit, not connections, then the best and brightest can lead the country, people will work hard, and the entire economy will grow - everyone will benefit and more resources will be available for all, not just select groups.

Barack Obama

#19. The unions say 'last hired - first fired,', we say hire and fire based on merit. We want the best and brightest in the classroom.

Scott Walker

#20. The best and brightest don't go into politics. The best and brightest are at Goldman Sachs.

P. J. O'Rourke

#21. The United States of America became the envy of the world because we welcomed the best and brightest minds from anywhere on the planet and gave them the opportunity to succeed.

Naveen Jain

#22. I'm for fighting a war on terrorism, not a war in Southwest Asia that Alexander the Great couldn't win, the British Empire couldn't win, the Soviet Union couldn't win. That's stupid. It's a waste of resources; a waste of America's best and brightest.

Kurt Schrader

#23. By making college unaffordable and student loans unbearable, we risk deterring our best and brightest from pursuing higher education and securing a good-paying job.

Mark Pocan

#24. Don't let the vision be shot through with holes, but be damn sure some of your best and brightest are shooting at it
with bazookas as well as sniper's rifles.

Tom Peters

#25. When it comes to competing with the best and brightest in whatever your talents or educational skills are, you have to have the confidence within yourself that you are able to achieve.

Ellen J. Barrier

#26. If you can attract highly educated people from other parts of the country and keep your own best and brightest, chances are the job creators are going to be successful.

Mick Cornett

#27. Rural places have hemorrhaged their best and brightest children, their intellectuals, thinkers, organizers, leaders, and artists-those who would create change and who would parent another generation of thinkers. All gone.
Our seeds are disappearing.

Janisse Ray

#28. Talented performers flock to the best and brightest leaders, and these leaders in turn lift the lids off their people and uncork the latent talent inside of them.

John C. Maxwell

#29. Dean Acheson was one of the very best and brightest of the men who ever came to Washington.

Katharine Graham

#30. Are we a nation that educates the world's best and brightest in our universities, only to send them home to create businesses in countries that compete against us? Or are we a nation that encourages them to stay and create jobs, businesses, and industries right here in America?

Barack Obama

#31. Surely, I thought, a few bushes and some dilapidated wood couldn't stop someone's best and brightest blessing! Surely not!

Wendelin Van Draanen

#32. My job is to hire the best and brightest employees and empower them to do their best work. As a manager, I am not a mind reader nor an expert at every job function. Therefore, it is incumbent on all hires to feel empowered to tell me what resources they need to do their job.

Jay Samit

#33. You are part of that horrid expression, the best and the brightest. It can be a terrible burden if you let it be, but it is the great challenge of your time. And being a warrior in that challenge should be wondrous.

Paul Tsongas

#34. As Believers, we shine brightest in a sad and dark world; like a diamond that illuminates best when placed on black velvet.

Chris Alexander

#35. Now things have changed for the better. Our reforms end seniority and tenure so we can hire and fire based on merit and pay based on performance. That means we can put the best and the brightest in our classrooms - and we can keep them there.

Scott Walker

#36. You have got to attract the brightest and the best, but the brightest and best won't stay unless they see real career options.

Estelle Morris

#37. We need the breast and the brightest to- umm the best and the brightest ...

Edward Kennedy

#38. Harvard Law provided an opportunity to learn from a faculty that had shaped the laws of our country and helped to change the world around us. It also offered an opportunity to study with the brightest students and to test myself against the best.

Kenneth Chenault

#39. Here ends my forever memorable first High Sierra excursion. I have crossed the Range of Light, surely the brightest and best of all the Lord has built. And, rejoicing in its glory, I gladly, gratefully, hopefully pray I may see it again.

John Muir

#40. I don't think that politics attracts the best and the brightest of America. It doesn't attract the most sincere people.

Dick Murphy

#41. Our notion that it is the best and the brightest who effortlessly rise to the top is much too simplistic.

Malcolm Gladwell

#42. America was becoming the world's best-defended Third World country, and the best and the brightest were collaborating in the process.

Norman Spinrad

#43. Some of the brightest and best women in our society are stifled in their ambitions.

Nicola Sturgeon

#44. Eisenhower is my choice as the American of the 20th Century. Of all the men I've studied and written about, he is the brightest and the best.

Stephen Ambrose

#45. There are teachers' unions around the country realizing they want to improve standards of the profession, improve the quality of their profession, and ultimately attract the best and the brightest to their profession. The vast majority of teachers are dedicated and committed.

Antonio Villaraigosa

#46. Someone said: friends are the thiefs of time. I shall add: of time, freedom, life; and givers of best memories, brightest moments, true feelings.

Mykyta Isagulov

#47. Stop teaching students that they are the best and the brightest.

David Maister

#48. Tonight we celebrate Hollywood's best and whitest, sorry ... brightest.

Neil Patrick Harris

#49. Hold out for the best there is, Kiernan. You should have it. Make sure that there's fire. Maybe there'll be ice, too, but hold out for the extremes, for the best, the brightest. Don't accept anything lukewarm. Because you're fire and ice, and you're the brightest and the best, Kiernan.

Heather Graham

#50. New York City is a fascinating place because it's very good at using the energy in attracting some of the best and the brightest from everywhere.

Juan Enriquez

#51. Those who despise fame seldom deserve it. We are apt to undervalue the purchase we cannot reach, to conceal our poverty the better. It is a spark which kindles upon the best fuel, and burns brightest in the bravest breast.

Jeremy Collier

#52. Brightest and best of the sons of the morning,
Dawn on our darkness, and lend us thine aid.
Star of the east the horizon adorning,
Guide where our infant Redeemer is laid.

Reginald Heber