Time & Perspective Quote by Henry Cisneros

"I don't think we have any time to waste" is the kind of line politicians reach for when they want urgency without committing to specifics. Henry Cisneros delivers it like a pressure valve: it releases public impatience and converts it into permission to move fast. The wording matters. "I don't think" softens the command into a personal judgment, a rhetorical courtesy that still lands as directive. "We" recruits the listener into shared responsibility, dissolving the boundary between decision-makers and the governed. "Any time" and "to waste" frame delay not as caution or debate but as moral failure.

Cisneros, a prominent figure in Democratic urban policy and later HUD, is closely associated with the language of cities: housing shortages, neighborhood decline, infrastructure, poverty, immigration pressures. In that arena, time is never neutral. A month of procedural delay can mean families priced out, projects stalled, homelessness rising, federal dollars expiring, political windows closing. The phrase is built for that reality, but it also benefits from it: it makes opposition sound like procrastination, even when the disagreement is about priorities or trade-offs.

The subtext is a pitch for momentum and legitimacy. If time is being "wasted", then action becomes virtue, speed becomes competence, and complexity becomes an excuse. It's a compact way to claim the moral high ground of pragmatism: whatever we're about to do, the real enemy is waiting.