“I'm better at criticism than social engineering, so I always have a hard time answering good practical questions like "what can the average person do?"”

— Wendy Kaminer

Of course, there are obvious answers, like the average person can get involved in local politics, the average person can get involved in violence prevention programs in his or her own neighborhood, the average person can engage with local radio and TV talk shows on crime. I'm afraid, though, that's not a very good answer. I'm best at knowing what I can do personally, which is write and think about issues like these, point out problems, and hope that people like you can do a better job than I can of figuring out where to go next. I've always seen the formulation of public policy — and solutions to social problems — as a collaborative effort. I've always felt that my part of the job was to analyze and criticize in the hope that other people might use my work to forge solutions.
"6/24/95 Wendy Kaminer on Crime" (24 June 1995)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I'm better at criticism than social engineering, so I always have a hard time answering good practical questions like "…" by Wendy Kaminer?

Wendy Kaminer 14

American lawyer 1949

Related quotes

“There's a moment in everybody's life...where you have more past than future, and then you better start organizing your time. So I thought maybe this is the time to do this. I'm not keen on people following me and recording my life and asking personal questions and what-not, but I figured I had to do it.”

Rubén Blades (1948) Panamanian musician, singer, composer, actor, activist, and politician

Source: On the documentary Ruben Blades Is Not My Name in "Inside Ruben Blades: New Documentary Showcases the Man Behind the Music" https://afropop.org/articles/inside-ruben-blades-new-documentary-showcases-the-man-behind-the-music in Afropop Worldwide (2018 Apr 10)

“Love is the answer at least for most of the questions in my heart
Like: why are we here? And where do we go? And how come it's so hard?
It's not always easy and sometimes life can be deceiving
I'll tell you one thing its always better when we're together.”

Jack Johnson (musician) (1975) American musician

Better Together.
Song lyrics, In Between Dreams (2005)

“Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than an exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise.”

John Tukey (1915–2000) American mathematician

The future of data analysis. Annals of Mathematical Statistics 33 (1), (1962), page 13.
Variant: "An approximate answer to the right question is worth a great deal more than a precise answer to the wrong question." "as the renowned statistician John Tukey once reportedly said," according to Super Freakonomics page 224.