Quotes about clearance (12 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Former CIA director John Brennan, whose security clearance you revoked on Wednesday, is one of the finest public servants I have ever known. Few Americans have done more to protect this country than John.”

William H. McRaven (1955) United States admiral

Open letter to US President Donald Trump (2018)
Context: Dear Mr. President:
Former CIA director John Brennan, whose security clearance you revoked on Wednesday, is one of the finest public servants I have ever known. Few Americans have done more to protect this country than John. He is a man of unparalleled integrity, whose honesty and character have never been in question, except by those who don’t know him.
Therefore, I would consider it an honor if you would revoke my security clearance as well, so I can add my name to the list of men and women who have spoken up against your presidency.

Country

“But as the priceless treasure too frequently hides at the bottom of well, it needs some courage to dive for it, especially as he that does so will be likely to incur more scorn and obloquy for the mud and water into which he has ventured to plunge, than thanks for the jewel he procures; as like in manner, she who undertakes the cleansing of a careless bachelor's apartment will be liable to more abuse for the dust she raises than commendation for the clearance she effects.”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Preface, 2nd edition (22 July 1848)
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848)

Courage , Water

“Later that evening, with exhaustion setting in and nothing left to do but wait for clearance to fly, Cathy and I took the aircrew to dinner; the members of our traveling staff stayed behind, chained to their phones and computers. We walked through the quiet waterfront to the lamp-lit, sandstone-block courtyard of the Mylos Taverna. As we filed to our corner table, the normally-effusive chatter of the Greek patrons dropped to a whisper. I scanned the nearby tables; faces everywhere were drawn with sadness. Yiannis, our usually-smiling waiter, approached silently and shook my hand as if at a funeral. "Everyone is so sorry, General," the man said.”

Tommy Franks (1945) United States Army general

Source: American Soldier (2004), p. 246

Sadness , Smile , Travel , Waiting

“Not merely in the realm of commerce but in the world of ideas as well our age is organizing a regular clearance sale. Everything is to be had at such a bargain that it is questionable whether in the end there is anybody who will want to bid. Every speculative price-fixer who conscientiously directs attention to the significant march of modern philosophy, every Privatdocent, tutor, and student, every crofter and cottar goes further. Perhaps it would be untimely and ill-timed to ask them where they are going.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Preface
1840s, Fear and Trembling (1843)

Age , World , Idea , Question

“I think it's a big danger for the industry. I don't think it's a healthy way to run the business long-term. We felt it had run its course. We felt it was good for clearance time. I think GM was just feeling the pressure.”

Steve Lyons (1960) American baseball player

Way , Feeling , Business , Thinking

“I believe Mull had much to do with my poetry: its physical beauty, so different from Skye’s, with the terrible imprint of the clearances on it, made it almost intolerable for a Gael.”

Sorley MacLean (1911–1996) Scottish poet

Sorley MacLean, The Sorley MacLean Trust http://www.sorleymaclean.org/english/from_skye.htm
Letters and interviews

Beauty

“The work itself will cover a wide field including clearance of slums, which for adequate reasons cannot be undertaken by private capital; in rural housing of several kinds, where, again, private capital is unable to function; in rural electrification; in the reforestation of the great watersheds of the Nation; in an intensified program to prevent soil erosion and to reclaim blighted areas; in improving existing road systems and in constructing national highways designed to handle modern traffic; in the elimination of grade crossings; in the extension and enlargement of the successful work of the Civilian Conservation Corps; in non-Federal works, mostly self-liquidating and highly useful to local divisions of Government; and on many other projects which the Nation needs and cannot afford to neglect.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

1930s, State of the Union address (1935)

Success , Housing

“The beacon-blaze unsheathing turns
The face of darkness pale
And now with one grand chop gives clearance to
Our human visions...”

Richard Wilbur (1921–2017) American poet

The Beacon

“Those incentives have made the legacy of this Courts public purpose test an unhappy one. In the 1950s, no doubt emboldened in part by the expansive understanding of public use this Court adopted in Berman, cities rushed to draw plans for downtown development. Of all the families displaced by urban renewal from 1949 through 1963, 63 percent of those whose race was known were nonwhite, and of these families, 56 percent of nonwhites and 38 percent of whites had incomes low enough to qualify for public housing, which, however, was seldom available to them. Public works projects in the 1950s and 1960s destroyed predominantly minority communities in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Baltimore, Maryland. In 1981, urban planners in Detroit, Michigan, uprooted the largely lower-income and elderly Poletown neighborhood for the benefit of the General Motors Corporation. Urban renewal projects have long been associated with the displacement of blacks; [i]n cities across the country, urban renewal came to be known as Negro removal. Over 97 percent of the individuals forcibly removed from their homes by the slum-clearance project upheld by this Court in Berman were black. Regrettably, the predictable consequence of the Court’s decision will be to exacerbate these effects.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Dissenting Kelo v. New London http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=US&navby=case&vol=000&invol=04-108.
2000s, Kelo v. New London (2005)

Family , Home , Communication , Understanding

“This year, ladies and gentlemen, I was cool for 2 seconds of my life. I got to fly with the Air Force Thunderbirds. (Audience hoots and hollers) You betcha! They called me up out of the blue, and they go, "Hey, we want you to fly with us." And I'm like, "You got the right number?" They said, "Yeah, Bill Engvall, comedian. You stand for what America stands for. Be an honor to have you fly with us." I'm like, (dork voice) "Be an honor to fly with 'ya." He goes, "Well, we gotta get you clearance from the Pentagon."”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

I go, "Well, you're screwed."
15 Degrees Off Cool (2007)
15° Off Cool (2007)

Life , Flying

“Perhaps you should have asked President Barack Obama if he had read the Constitution — undoubtedly you would agree we have witnessed a few unconstitutional actions from him. And while you were at it, Mr. Khan, perhaps you could have asked Hillary Clinton about handling classified information — since I’m quite sure your son, Captain Khan, had at a minimum a secret clearance.”

Allen West (politician) (1961) American politician; retired United States Army officer

2010s, Open letter to Khizr M. Khan (31 July 2016)

Secret , Reading

“A persuasive way of understanding the collapse of Communism in Europe and the Soviet Union is to think of nineteenth- or twentieth-century slum clearance. For in many respects the Soviet Empire was a slum of continental proportions. Beyond the grotesque architectural assertions of an alien ideology, public housing – almost all housing – consisted of anomic and primitive concrete barracks where the smells of cabbage, damp and low-grade tobacco combined. Rivers and lakes were polluted by chemicals, with the Pleisse river in East Germany alternately turning first red then yellow.”

Michael Burleigh (1955) American historian and writer

Source: Sacred Causes: The Clash of Religion and Politics, From the Great War to the War on Terror (2006), p. 415

Housing , Understanding , Communication , Thinking