I think about people and events in terms of archetypes a lot. Zephyr Teachout More Quotes by Zephyr Teachout More Quotes From Zephyr Teachout People think that the politician is just part of a system, and whether they're lying or not doesn't matter. Zephyr Teachout lyingpeoplethinking 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 givingpeopleneeds There is a long American tradition of suspicion of concentrated economic power because of its tendency to corrupt government and turn it from a democracy into a plutocracy. Zephyr Teachout politicalgovernmentlong 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 funcharacterthinking One of the most dangerous things about Fox News isn't that it's right wing but that it's nihilistic. It takes away the capacity to believe in politics. Zephyr Teachout newswingsbelieve Creativity is essential to any kind of joyful living. Sometimes I act, sometimes I draw, I paint, I write poems. I can't imagine living without it. Zephyr Teachout creativityessentialswriting 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 believepeoplethinking 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. So the temptations of social media lead to some dissonance. Zephyr Teachout hard-workintegritythinking In Europe, populism is sort of a dirty word, but we have this wonderful history of populism in America, including the abolitionist populists and the white and black populists working together in the nineteenth century. Zephyr Teachout whiteeuropedirty My current goal is to change the way we think about antitrust and anti-monopoly. Zephyr Teachout goalwaythinking I don't have any particular plans in mind. What I see is that you can become so focused on the idea of running that winning becomes your motivation, as opposed to what you stand for being your motivation. Zephyr Teachout motivationwinningrunning If those people in power never made any mistakes, we'd be done for as a democracy. But people keep making mistakes. History is a series of mistakes. Zephyr Teachout democracymistakepeople 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 politicalpeoplethinking 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 climatecitiesnew-york I think that most people have deeply creative sensibilities. Zephyr Teachout creativepeoplethinking This is what's so hard about our current politics: things poll well, but people don't believe that politicians are telling the truth. Zephyr Teachout telling-the-truthbelievepeople If you think art is a competitive forum, then you're going to stop doing it if you're not good. But if it's not competitive, it's something that you'll keep doing. Zephyr Teachout forumsartthinking I'm not from the arts, I'm a law professor. But I think we need more poetry in politics. Zephyr Teachout lawartthinking 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 funcharacterthinking 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 importantnew-yorkcountry
