Leadership Quote by Kitty O'Neill Collins

Advice is the cheapest currency in public life, and Kitty O'Neill Collins spends it with a stingy kind of honesty. "We may give advice, but not the sense to use it" is a politician's line that refuses the comforting fiction that good guidance automatically produces good outcomes. It draws a hard boundary around responsibility: you can offer counsel, you can set options on the table, but you cannot install judgment in another person like a policy program.

The phrasing matters. "We may" is permissive, almost shrugging, as if acknowledging a civic ritual everyone participates in. Then comes the pivot: "but not the sense". Collins isn't talking about intelligence; she's talking about practical wisdom, the messy, situational discernment that decides whether advice is timely, self-serving, or even applicable. "Sense" is the word that keeps this from sounding like a lecture and turns it into a warning about agency.

Coming from a politician, the subtext is sharper. It's a quiet rebuke to constituents who demand fixes without tradeoffs, and to colleagues who believe memos can substitute for character. It also functions as self-defense: when a plan goes sideways, the adviser can claim they did their part. In an era when women in politics were often boxed into caretaking roles, Collins flips expectations. She'll offer guidance, yes, but she refuses to be held accountable for someone else's refusal to grow up and use it.