Public Office Quotes & Sayings

That no man, or set of men, are entitled to exclusive or separate emoluments or privileges from the community, but in consideration of public services; which, not being descendible, neither ought the offices of magistrate, legislator, or judge to be hereditary. — George Mason

One of the things that you learn, having been in this [President's] office for four years, is the old adage of Abraham Lincoln's. That with public opinion there's nothing you can't do and without public opinion there's very little you can get done. — Barack Obama

Nowadays, for the sake of the advantage which is to be gained from the public revenues and from office, men want to be always in office. — Aristotle.

[Senator]Torricelli [D-NJ] will leave public office with just the clothes on his back, a Rolex watch and other assorted jewelry, a TV set, a couple of racks of Italian suits, some Jets tickets, a grandfather clock and three paper sacks filled with small, unmarked bills. — Ann Coulter

I don't want to see any religious people in public office because they're working for another boss. — Frank Zappa

I'm a small-town kid who grew up with a cornfield in the back yard and dreaming of serving my country in public office. — Mike Pence

Most of all, be honest with yourself and make sure those in political office, our so called public servants, are being honest, holding them accountable for their actions! — David Pratt

I think by the time I left Egypt, there was about like 400 accusations against me in the drawer of the public persecutor office. It's a way for them to exhaust you, to push you, to put you under pressure, to distract you. — Bassem Youssef

ultimately, the long-term goal is to have a critically informed public vote out of office representatives that are sacrificing children to the corporate bottom line with prepackaged teacher-proof curricula, standardized tests, and accountability schemes. — Pepi Leistyna

For almost 50 years polls have shown that a large majority of the public believe that the budget should be balanced, and for all that time they have elected office seekers who would not balance it. The public cares about deficits, but doesn't care much. — Herbert Stein

Wrong' is why we have this office. 'Wrong' is why we both have the bank accounts we do. 'Wrong' is what our readers, our viewers, our subscribers ... what the public wants to see. 'Wrong' is why you and I are rich.

For the next two or three weeks, until you turn in that winning ticket, I will be the one person in the world you will need to trust. I will be the architect of the new life the two of you are about to embark on. I know your best case scenarios and a whole lot of the worst case scenarios you might run into.

Any publicity for you is publicity for us too. You might not understand it, but as far as the world is concerned, Celebrity Bounty owns you and your family. — Michael Vraa

Doesn't private vice make a man unworthy of public office?" And now kindly Mrs. Albion looked at Mercy with genuine astonishment. "Well," she laughed, "if it did, there'd be no one to govern the land. — Edward Rutherfurd

I have been a lifelong community activist and frankly did not dream of being in public office. — Karen Bass

As Members of Congress, we should not be using public office for private gain. — Sheila Jackson Lee

When the liberal comes before the electorate as a candidate for public office and is asked by those whose votes he solicits what he or his party intends to do for them and their group, the only answer he can give is: Liberalism serves everyone, but it serves no special interest.
To be a liberal is to have realized that a special privilege conceded to a small group to the disadvantage of others cannot, in the long run, be preserved without a fight (civil war): but that, on the other hand, one cannot bestow privileges on the majority, since these then cancel one another out in their value for those whom they are supposed to specially favor, and the only net result is a reduction in the productivity of social labor. — Ludwig Von Mises

This was the first time a woman in Dallas had won public office of any kind - even women questioned whether or not I was qualified, whether or not I could take it. — Eddie Bernice Johnson

I'm not involved in politics, and I've never had any political role. I've never been in office. I've never taken any public administrative jobs. — Isabel Dos Santos

But the most annoying of all public reformers is the personal satirist. Though he may be considered by some few as a useful member of society, yet he is only ranked with the hangman, whom we tolerate because he executes the judgment we abhor to do ourselves, and avoid with a natural detestation of his office. The pen of the one and the cord of the other are inseparable in our minds. — Jane Porter

Christine O'Donnell is making a mockery of running for public office. She has no real history, no real success in any kind of business. And what that sends to my generation is, one day, you can just wake up and run for Senate, no matter how [much] lack of experience you have. — Meghan McCain

If you visit London, you'll occasionally cross paths with young men (and less often women) on motor scooters, blithely darting in and out of traffic while studying maps affixed to their handlebars. These studious cyclists are training to become London cabdrivers. Before they can receive accreditation from London's Public Carriage Office, cabbies-in-training must spend two to four years memorizing the locations and traffic patterns of all 25,000 streets in the vast and vastly confusing city, as well as the locations of 1,400 landmarks. Their training culminates in an infamously daunting exam called "the Knowledge," in which they not only have to plot the shortest route between any two points in the metropolitan area, but also name important places of interest along the way. Only about three out of ten people who train for the Knowledge obtain certification. — Joshua Foer

The main thing that every political campaign in the United States demonstrates is that the politicians of all parties, despite their superficial enmities, are really members of one great brotherhood. Their principal, and indeed their sole, object is to collar public office, with all the privileges and profits that go therewith. They achieve this collaring by buying votes with other people's money. — H.L. Mencken

Now be it known, That I John Adams, President of the United States of America, having seen and considered the said Treaty do, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, accept, ratify, and confirm the same, and every clause and article thereof. And to the End that the said Treaty may be observed, and performed with good Faith on the part of the United States, I have ordered the premises to be made public; And I do hereby enjoin and require all persons bearing office civil or military within the United States, and all other citizens or inhabitants thereof, faithfully to observe and fulfill the said Treaty and every clause and article thereof. — John Adams

Language kills, and inflamed rhetoric of the kind that spews almost daily from the lips of Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee, and others running for public office in this country should be condemned. — Jay Parini

As I became Speaker in 1986, I made a point of setting up a public information office to respond to requests and provide information about Parliament and how it functions. — John Allen Fraser

No man should be in public office who can't make more money in private life. — Thomas Dewey

For Mitt Romney, the complex question of anti-Mormon bias boils down to the practical matter of how he can make it go away. Facing a traditional American anti-Catholicism, John F. Kennedy gave a speech during the 1960 presidential campaign declaring his private religion irrelevant to his qualifications for public office. — Noah Feldman

I was friends with President Ronald Reagan and he once said to me, 'I don't know how anybody can serve in public office without being an actor.' — Warren Beatty

In the wake of the tax bonanzas for new commercial projects, roadside strips boomed. Private developers responded to the lack of planned centers, public space, and public facilities in suburbs by building malls, office parks, and industrial parks as well as fast-food restaurants and motels. — Dolores Hayden

In 1840, the year that Victoria and Albert were married, no woman in the kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland could vote, be elected to parliament or any other public office, attend the university, or enter a profession. If a woman married, her property, her earnings, her children, and her body legally belonged to her husband, to do with as he willed. The world of business was more hostile to women in 1840 than it had been in 1740 or 1640, and though many women were forced to work, a bare handful could make a living wage. — Gillian Gill

There is more than one way to be Kluxed, and we need to think about ourselves and the kind of people we elect into public office. — Stetson Kennedy

My experience has proved that a man who is running for office, and is not willing to make his honest opinions known to the public, either has no honest opinions or is not honest about them. — William Randolph Hearst

Atheists are the new gays; in the closet and pretty much disqualified from public office. — Richard Dawkins

The most effective solution is to vote! Vote the climate-change-deniers out of office. Then, for John Q. Public, it's all about energy conservation: use less, because most of what we're consuming is from fossilized carbon! — Wesley K. Wark

It is when the politician loves neither the public good nor himself, or when his love for himself is limited and is satisfied by the trappings of office, that the public interest is badly served. — John F. Kennedy

The reporters who came to the press conference in the
office of the John Galt Line were young men who had
been trained to think that their job consisted of
concealing from the world the nature of its events.
It was their daily duty to serve as audience for some
public figure who made utterances about the public good,
in phrases carefully chosen to convey no meaning.
It was their daily job to sling words together in any
combination they pleased, so long as the words did not
fall into a sequence saying something specific.
They could not understand the interview now being
given to them. — Ayn Rand

I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office. — Newt Gingrich

There are major efforts being made to dismantle Social Security, the public schools, the post office - anything that benefits the population has to be dismantled. Efforts against the U.S. Postal Service are particularly surreal. — Noam Chomsky

But anyone who deliberately tries to get himself elected to a public office is permanently disqualified from holding one. — Thomas Moore

What is inherently wrong with the word 'politician' if the fellow has devoted his life to holding public office and trying to do something for his people? — Richard J. Daley

[Richard Bedford Bennett] was the richest Prime Minister and the only millionaire to hold office before Pierre Trudeau. His money obviously colored his thinking
colored it true blue
but he did not consider it a political drawback. No leader, he said, could serve the public properly if he was constantly looking over his shoulder at the shadow of debts. This theory is now widely accepted in the United States where it has become practically impossible for a non-millionaire to run for high office without selling pieces of himself like a prize-fighter. Yet the public still suspects a self-made millionaire like Lyndon Johnson while revering the much-richer John F. Kennedy, who got it all from his father. — Gordon Donaldson

He once reduced the President of the United States - then a ceremonial post, but one much loved by people who lived within the old borders - to tears of laughter at a state dinner, by delivering a learned dissertation on computer data storage technology in a flawless Texan accent. The lady was later heard to propose an amendment to the Constitution to allow off-worlders to hold high public office, so that she could have him for her running mate in the next election. It — Diane Duane

At the top of the Queen's Staircase at the Tuileries, there is a series of communicating chambers, crowded every day with clerks, secretaries, messengers, with army officers and purveyors, officials of the Commune and officers of the courts: with government couriers, booted and spurred, waiting for dispatches from the last room in the suite. Look down: outside there are cannon and files of soldiers. The room at the end was once the private office of Louis the Last. You cannot go in.
That room is now the office of the Committee of Public Safety. The Committee exists to supervise the Council of Ministers and to expedite its decisions. — Hilary Mantel

Anyway, my office is small - one room, but on the corner, with a couple of windows. The sign on the door reads, simply, HARRY DRESDEN, WIZARD. Just inside the door is a table, covered with pamphlets with titles like: Magic and You, and Why Witches Don't Sink Any Faster Than Anyone Else - a Wizard's Perspective. I wrote most of them. I think it's important for we practitioners of the Art to keep up a good public image. Anything to avoid another Inquisition. — Jim Butcher

And one of the things I've tried to do in my first months in office is to give more Georgians - reporters and members of the general public alike - a closer look at how their government works. — Roy Barnes

Washington, like most scholarly Virginians of his time, was a Deist... Contemporary evidence shows that in mature life Washington was a Deist, and did not commune, which is quite consistent with his being a vestryman. In England, where vestries have secular functions, it is not unusual for Unitarians to vestrymen, there being no doctrinal subscription required for that office. Washington's letters during the Revolution occasionally indicate his recognition of the hand of Providence in notable public events, but in the thousands of his letters I have never been able to find the name of Christ or any reference to him.

{Conway was employed to edit Washington's letters} — Moncure D. Conway

In general, any incoming administration must carefully examine ('vet') its nominees for high public office. — Richard V. Allen

You know, I could run for governor but I'm basically a media creation. I've never done anything.
I've worked for my dad. I worked in the oil business.
But that's not the kind of profile you have to have to get elected to public office. — George W. Bush

Sheriff Petersen just went right on getting re-elected, a living testimonial to the fact that you can hold an important public office forever in our country with no qualifications for it but a clean nose, a photogenic face and a close mouth. If on top of that you look good on a horse, you are unbeatable. — Raymond Chandler

People like Mike McConnell don't really move from public office to the private sector and back again; that implies more separation than actually exists. Rather, the U.S. government and industry interests essentially form one gigantic, amalgamated, inseparable entity - with a public division and a private one. When someone like McConnell goes from a top private sector position to a top government post in the same field, it's more like an intracorporate reassignment than it is like changing employers. When McConnell serves as DNI he's simply in one division of this entity, and when he's at Booz Allen he is in another. It's precisely the same way that Goldman Sachs officials endlessly move in and out of the Treasury Department and other government positions with financial authority, or the way that health care and oil executives move in and out of government agencies charged with regulating those fields. In — Glenn Greenwald

My reason for fixing them in office for a term of years, rather than for life, was that they might have an idea that they were at a certain period to return into the mass of the people and become the governed instead of the governors which might still keep alive that regard to the public good that otherwise they might perhaps be induced by their independence to forget. — Thomas Jefferson

Believing that only under God Almighty, to Whom we render all homage, do we Americans hold our vast Power, we shall guarantee to all persons absolute freedom of religious worship, provided, however, that no atheist, agnostic, believer in Black Magic, nor any Jew who shall refuse to swear allegiance to the New Testament, nor any person of any faith who refuses to take the Pledge to the Flag, shall be permitted to hold any public office or to practice as a teacher, professor, lawyer, judge, or as a physician, except in the category of Obstetrics. — Sinclair Lewis

Did he orchestrate the reclusive redcap's rise to become a predator in public office? Plant the swarm of brownies on the mayor's lawn? Promote adoption of the Dewey decimal system in libraries across the continent? It's the not knowing I find most irksome." "The Dewey decimal system?" "It's gaining popularity. I don't trust it." "We'll — William Ritter

Sistani's office refuses the replacement of the law [which excludes former Baath Party members from returning to public life] because it is not an Iraqi demand but it is a political demand to please some sides. — Ali Al-Sistani

All Negroes shall be prohibited from voting, holding public office, practicing law, medicine, or teaching in any class above the grade of grammar school, and they shall be taxed 100 per cent of all sums in excess of $10,000 per family per year which they may earn or in any other manner receive. — Sinclair Lewis

James Madison, the author of the First Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting any law respecting an establishment of religion, was also an author of Article VI, which states unambiguously that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust." His later Detached Memoranda make it very plain that he opposed the government appointment of chaplains in the first place, either in the armed forces or at the opening ceremonies of Congress. "The establishment of the chaplainship to Congress is a palpable violation of equal rights, as well as of Constitutional principles. — Christopher Hitchens

Suddenly, [Cecilia Washburn] was getting a lot of attention from her friends," Pabst explained to the jury. "Attention from the dean of the pharmacy school ... .Attention by Dean Charles Couture, the then dean of students; by the Crime Victim Advocate office; by the nurse, [Claire] Francoeur ... .Miss Washburn got attention by the investigator and by the prosecutor. Her regret was replaced by sympathy, attention, and support, and a little bit of drama, and a little bit of celebrity ... .Her regret, fueled by drama, became purpose. She received a new public - and important - identity: victim. — Jon Krakauer

Republicans always play the same game. They are for big business and money interests...We know from long experience that the people are better served by Democratic public officials, and we are letting the people down when we permit factional fighting to put Republicans in office. — Marc Sandalow

My God, I left to attend to one private case, and I've come back to find the entire damned public office falling apart!
-Nick — Lisa Kleypas

Notwithstanding the trouble, notwithstanding the argument, notwithstanding the increasingly heavy hand of government, notwithstanding the spirit of arrogance we so often display, notwithstanding the growing tide of pornography and permissiveness, notwithstanding occasional corruption in public office and betrayal of sacred trust-I marvel at the miracle of America ... — Gordon B. Hinckley

Our constitutional ban on religious tests for public office is worth less to the non-religious than the sheepskin parchment it was written on was worth to the sheep. — Unknown

I'm not one of the people who have to be in public office. — Antonio Villaraigosa

I want to tell you ladies and gentlemen, the actions that we took were not always easy. The actions that we took were not always popular. But when you get yourself in public office, you must lead, you must do what's necessary. — John Kasich

When you want to know something about the character of somebody in public life, look to see if they have a passion that began long before they were in office and that they have consistently held it throughout their career. — Tim Kaine

All citizens including women are equally admissible to all public dignities, offices, and employments, according to their capacity, and with no other distinction than that of their virtues and talents. — Olympe De Gouges

I leave the governor's office next week, and with it public life[which] has been on the whole a pleasant one. But for ten years and over my salaries have not equalled my expenses, and there has been a feeling of responsibility, a lack of independence, and a necessary neglect of my family and personal interests and comfort, which make the prospect of a change comfortable to think of. — Rutherford B. Hayes

People who run for office and are defeated aren't rejected in the usual sense of the word. They're just defeated because they couldn't get enough votes that one time. It doesn't mean the public despises them. It's a preference for somebody else for that particular office at that particular moment, that's all. The examples I've given have shown that when those men were passed up, they were still highly thought of and were still great men. There were a good many like that. You take the Adams family. After John Quincy Adams passed on, there were Adams descendants in Lincoln's cabinet. They wrote important histories and things of that kind. Even in the states, some good men are governors who have been defeated previously in elections, even in previous tries for governor. If they don't become pessimists and decide to lay down and take it, if they get up and start over again, why, they don't have any trouble. — Harry Truman

Public office is a public trust, the authority and opportunities of which must be used as absolutely as the public moneys for the public benefit, and not for the purposes of any individual or party. — Dorman Bridgeman Eaton

He had spent the last five years, he [JFK] said ruefully, running for office, and he did not know any real public officials, people to run a government, serious men. The only ones he knew, he admitted, were politicians, and if this seemed a denigration of his own kind, it was not altogether displeasing to the older man. Politicians did need men to serve, to run the government. The implication was obvious. Politicians could run Pennsylvania and Ohio, and if they could not run Chicago they could at least deliver it. But politicians run the world? What did they know about the Germans, the French, the Chinese? He needed experts for that — David Halberstam

The phrase public office is a public trust, has of last become common property. — Charles Sumner

I'm just another guy who sits there day to day in the office, watching what's happening, and goes, 'This is something that's not our place to decide.' The public needs to decide whether these programs or policies are right or wrong, — Edward Snowden

Pundits, opponents, and disillusioned supporters would blame Obama for squandering the promise of his administration. Certainly he and his administration made their share of mistakes. But it is hard to think of another president who had to face the kind of guerrilla warfare waged against him almost as soon as he took office. A small number of people with massive resources orchestrated, manipulated, and exploited the economic unrest for their own purposes. They used tax-deductible donations to fund a movement to slash taxes on the rich and cut regulations on their own businesses. While they paid focus groups and seasoned operatives to frame these self-serving policies as matters of dire public interest, they hid their roles behind laws meant to protect the anonymity of philanthropists, leaving more folksy figures like Santelli to carry the message. — Jane Mayer

I was embarrassed when I went and told my parents that I was thinking about running for public office. — Bob Corker

Few things would gratify me as much as a rediscovered respect for things belonging to others. Not abusing the property of others (or that of the community) is one of the ways in which we respect others. It is an essential part of being considerate guests, no matter where we are: in an airplane, in a friend's home, in a movie theater, in a doctor's office, in a public library, or in a public square. — P. M. Forni

Law of Suspects. Suspects are those: who have in any way aided tyranny (royal tyranny, Brissotin tyranny ... ); who cannot show that they have performed their civic duties; who do not starve, and yet have no visible means of support; who have been refused certificates of citizenship by their Sections; who have been removed from public office by the Convention or its representatives; who belong to an aristocratic family, and have not given proof of constant and extraordinary revolutionary fervor; or who have emigrated. — Hilary Mantel

Every special interest is entitled to justice full, fair and complete ... but not one is entitled to a vote in Congress, to a voice on the bench or to representation in any public office. — Theodore Roosevelt

Anyone who campaigns for public office becomes disqualified for holding any office at all. — Thomas More

I wanted a CFO with public company experience; I needed an HR department, new office space, and a board which could help me grow the business. Insight, the private equity firm I chose, helped me with all that. — Jon Oringer

American foreign policy was a mirror image of Russian foreign policy: whatever the Russians did, we did in reverse. American domestic policies were conducted under a kind of upside-down Russian veto: no man could be elected to public office unless he was on record as detesting the Russians, and no proposal could be enacted, from a peace plan at one end to a military budget at the other, unless it could be demonstrated that the Russians wouldn't like it. — Archibald MacLeish

The truth is, that, even with the most secure tenure of office, during good behavior, the danger is not, that the judges will be too firm in resisting public opinion, and in defence of private rights or public liberties; but, that they will be ready to yield themselves to the passions, and politics, and prejudices of the day. — Joseph Story

Most of the women who have offered themselves for public office over the years have done so, I believe, more because of the 'dirt' than in spite of it. — Agnes Macphail

How subservient to Jesus, or to a humane God Almighty, were the leaders of this country back in the 1840's, when Marx said such a supposedly evil thing about religion? They had made it perfectly legal to own human slaves, and weren't going to led women vote or hold public office, God forbid, for another eighty year. — Kurt Vonnegut

The thing I enjoyed most were visits from children. They did not want public office. — Herbert Hoover

Despite all the public hand-wringing about negative advertising, political veterans will tell you that it persists because, more often than not, it works. But tearing down the other guy has another attraction: It can be a substitute for building much of a case for what the mudslinger will do once in office. — Robert Dallek

For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected. — Potter Stewart

For out of such an ungoverned populace one is usually chosen as a leader, someone bold and unscrupulous who curries favor with the people by giving them other men's property. To such a man the protection of public office is given, and continually renewed. He emerges as a tyrant over the very people who raised him to power. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

What is my calling? What am I supposed to do? I think running for office, public office, can be a divine calling. I mean, I've wrestled with that very question myself. — Jim Wallis

Public office must not be a means to profit or become rich. — King Felipe VI

Nothing is so foolish, they say, as for a man to stand for office and woo the crowd to win its vote, buy its support with presents, court the applause of all those fools and feel self-satisfied when they cry their approval, and then in his hour of triumph to be carried round like an effigy for the public to stare at, and end up cast in bronze to stand in the market place. — Desiderius Erasmus

There are very few people who have had as much public impact as I've already had ... without being elected to public office in Massachusetts. — Chris Gabrieli

I have written to Minister of State for Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, asking him to consider 'staggered office timings' for government offices, which will help in decongesting road traffic during peak hours. — Veerappa Moily

The proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right. — Thomas Jefferson

I think we have a number of young people - like yourself - who want to make a difference. I'm not sure the numbers are as large because I think the burden of getting elected to public office at the national level has become astronomically expensive. — Birch Bayh

Since when do grown men and women, who presume to hold high government office and exercise what they think of as "moral leadership," require ethics officers to tell them whether it is or isn't permissible to grab the secretary's behind or redirect public funds to their own personal advantage? — Meg Greenfield

is "an architect of the modern type who preaches and practices cooperation. He has no use for the architect who 'shuts himself up in his office to make a design and then sends it out to a contractor to build or to an engineer to fit up the plumbing, heating and steel as best as he can.' Nor has he any use for the architect who 'goes up to a Communion on Mount Sinai and hands the results to the owner, the engineers and the public: In his view, as in my own, the best designs, at any rate for the building of skyscrapers, come from 'a group of minds in which the architect is one link in the — Ayn Rand

If it crosses your mind that water running through hundreds of miles of open ditch in a desert will evaporate and end up full of concentrated salts and muck, then let me just tell you, that kind of negative thinking will never get you elected to public office in the state of Arizona. When this giant new tap turned on, developers drew up plans to roll pink stucco subdivisions across the desert in all directions. The rest of us were supposed to rejoice as the new flow rushed into our pipes, even as the city warned us this water was kind of special. They said it was okay to drink but don't put it in an aquarium because it would kill the fish.
Drink it we did, then, filled our coffee makers too, and mixed our children's juice concentrate with fluid that would gag a guppy. Oh, America the Beautiful, where are our standards? — Barbara Kingsolver

Men should be disqualified for public office. Women should run the planet. They're better than us. — Ted Turner

The Open Market Committee, as presently established, is plainly not in the public interest. This committee must be operated by purely public servants, representatives of the people as a whole and not any single interest group. The Open Market Committee should be abolished, and its powers transferred to the Federal Reserve Board - the present public members of the committee, with reasonably short terms of office. — Wright Patman

Todd Palin's frequent presence in the governor's office led some in Juneau to call him the 'Shadow Governor.' But it had never been clear, at least to the public, what roles he played. — Bill Dedman

In England, philosophers are honoured, respected; they rise to public offices, they are buried with the kings ... In France warrants are issued against them, they are persecuted, pelted with pastoral letters: Do we see that England is any the worse for it? — John Dewey

A man of abilities and character, of any sect whatever, may be admitted to any office of public trust under the United States. — Edmund Randolph