Daily Inspiration Quote by Kim Campbell

Kim Campbell’s line lands with the practiced politeness of a politician and the steel edge of someone who’s watched policy-making up close: “in all modesty” is a rhetorical throat-clearing that signals restraint while teeing up a blunt indictment. The metaphor does the heavy lifting. By casting governments as “doctors,” she borrows the authority of expertise only to question it, hinting that public institutions often confuse symptoms for causes, then hand out medicine that feels decisive but may worsen the condition.

The subtext is a critique of technocratic confidence. Economic crises tempt leaders into the posture of omniscience, because markets are jittery and voters want a fix. Campbell punctures that performance: diagnosis is hard, treatment is uncertain, and the incentives inside government can skew both. “Not always” is doing strategic work, too. It keeps her from sounding anti-government while still legitimizing skepticism about state-led interventions, especially the kind driven by short electoral timelines, bureaucratic silos, or ideological reflex.

Context matters: Campbell’s career sits in the late-Cold War/early-globalization moment when faith in government management of the economy was being challenged by deregulation, free-trade politics, and the memory of inflationary shocks. Coming from a statesman rather than a market evangelist, the point reads less like libertarian dogma and more like institutional humility. She’s arguing for a politics that treats economic policy as diagnosis under uncertainty, not a moral drama with instant cures.