Quotes & Sayings About Public Servants

REAL Entrepreneurs will be the one's who change the world for the better.
Governments must become PUBLIC servants to create the best context and mindsets for people to succeed. We need to ReThink Entrepreneurial success and the role of Public Service in supporting that ... or we, and our children, will pay the ultimate price. — Tony Dovale

Liberty is not a matter of words, but a positive and important condition of society. Its greatest safeguard after placing its foundations in a popular base, is in the checks and balances imposed on the public servants. — James F. Cooper

How, Yusef wondered, can two men joke like that and tomorrow be enemies. Perhaps they'd been enemies yesterday. He decided public servants weren't human. — Thomas Pynchon

Successful democratic politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle, or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies. The decisive consideration is not whether the proposition is good but whether it is popular
not whether it will work well and prove itself but whether the active talking constituents like it immediately. Politicians rationalize this servitude by saying that in a democracy public men are the servants of the people. — Walter Lippmann

We must hold to a rigid accountability those public servants who show unfaithfulness to the interests of the nation or inability to rise to the high level of the new demands upon our strength and our resources. — Theodore Roosevelt

I have known several persons of great fame for wisdom in public affairs and councils governed by foolish servants. I have known great ministers, distinguished for wit and learning, who preferred none but dunces. I have known men of valor cowards to their wives. I have known men of cunning perpetually cheated. I knew three ministers who would exactly compute and settle the accounts of a kingdom, wholly ignorant of their own economy. — Horace Walpole

We call ourselves public servants but I'll tell you this: we as public servants must set an example for the rest of the nation. It is hypocritical for the public official to admonish and exhort the people to uphold the common good. — Barbara Jordan

The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly as necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else. — Theodore Roosevelt

I find that the great majority of public servants across the entire political spectrum come because they believe in the United States and they want to change the world. — Condoleezza Rice

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

If active or concerned citizens forfeit politics, they thereby abandon their society to its most mediocre and venal public servants — Tony Judt

Manufactured scandals prohibit public servants from doing the job they were elected or appointed to do. — Charles B. Rangel

We make our public servants jump through quite a few hoops, you know. We get hysterical if they accept a $50 lunch from a lobbyist. We get hysterical if they accept a ride on some corporate jet. — Christopher Buckley

After all we are merely the servants of the public, in spite of our M.D.'s and our hospital appointments. — Henry Howarth Bashford

After Dickinson and Adams had it out over the Olive Branch Petition, Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, that he and Dickinson "are not to be on speaking terms." How sad is it that this tiff sort of cheers me up? If two of the most distinguished, dedicated, and thoughtful public servants in the history of this republic could not find a way to agree to disagree, how can we expect the current crop of congressional blockheads to get along? — Sarah Vowell

It is important that politicians defend their ability to act without fear or favour, and it is in the public interest that they hold ministers and public servants to account. — Jeremy Corbyn

I believe that as public servants, we have a shared goal - to deliver to Americans the service they deserve and expect. — Todd Park

The way things are supposed to work is that we're supposed to know virtually everything about what they [the government] do: that's why they're called public servants. They're supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that's why we're called private individuals. — Glenn Greenwald

Public officers are the servants and agents of the people, to execute the laws which the people have made. — Grover Cleveland

Every citizen owes to the country a vigilant watch and close scrutiny of its public servants and a fair and reasonable estimate of their fidelity. — Grover Cleveland

We are in a movement that must not fade away. The bosses are you. The people in Washington are public servants, and they serve you. — Jeff Sessions

But veteran lawmakers torn apart by PTSD don't have a choice about being Exhibit A in the case against Washington politics. When you see what can happen to a page or a junior congressman, it passes on in a very real way, not in a history-class sense, that reality of what political power really is, .. Who are we to impose this emotional albatross on public servants? As a nation, we pretend to elect our leaders. It seems unjust to make them a special class to suffer for our sins over wrongheaded laws, or pay a continuing emotional price for securing their future careers. — Leon Kass

Ever since its founding in 1913, the Fed has described itself as an "independent" agency operated by selfless public servants striving to "fine-tune" the economy through monetary policy. In reality, however, a non-political governmental institution is as likely as a barking cat. — Thomas DiLorenzo

Disloyalty in trusted servants is one of the most disheartening things that can happen to a public performer. — Harry Houdini

Let us, while never forgetting our womanhood, drop all emphasis on sex, and put it on being public servants. — Bertha Knight Landes

War at home is matched by a war on youth. I wrote about this recently. Young people graduate with an average of $23,000 in student loan debt, and they are the ones saddled with it. Youth have become indentured servants and that turns them away from public service. — Henry Giroux

Justice is not available to all equally; it is something that many of us must struggle to achieve. As an elected official, I know that fighting for what is just is not always popular but it is necessary; that is the real challenge that public servants face and it is where courage counts the most. Without courage, our action or inaction results in suffering of the few and injustice for all. — Hilda Solis

No Socialist system can be established without a political police. Many of those who are advocating Socialism or voting Socialist today will be horrified at this idea. That is because they are short-sighted, that is because they do not see where their theories are leading them. No Socialist Government conducting the entire life and industry of the country could afford to allow free, sharp, or violently-worded expressions of public discontent. They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance. And this would nip opinion in the bud; it would stop criticism as it reared its head, and it would gather all the power to the supreme party and the party leaders, rising like stately pinnacles above their vast bureaucracies of Civil servants, no longer servants and no longer civil. — Winston S. Churchill

Think you it is easy to get a well-known and beautiful woman alone, away from her husband, at so public a gathering? Think you that, in the company of dozens of guests and nearly as many gossipy servants, a man can just pull such a woman aside into a private closet? It would not be easy for any ordinary man
at least I suspect it would not. I cannot say how ordinary men go about their business. — David Liss

Public servants are paid to serve the American people. Do it well. — Donald Rumsfeld

When asked about her involvements, Joni most often refers to her work at JAF Ministries, including Wheels for the World - a program through which used wheelchairs are collected, refurbished, and hand-delivered, along with Bibles, to needy disabled people in developing nations. Chuck Colson has stated, "My friend Joni Eareckson Tada is one of God's choice servants of today." Philip Yancey has added, "Through her public example, Joni has done more to straighten out warped views of suffering than all the theologians put together. Her life is a triumph of healing - a healing of the spirit, the most difficult kind." You can read more about this remarkable woman in the twentieth-anniversary edition of her autobiography, titled Joni, published by Zondervan. — Joni Eareckson Tada

A police officer wears a uniform. They're sworn to uphold the law. They're public servants. And they should not be above the law. — Marc Morial

They tend to be civil servants, often diplomats drawn from the Foreign Office, who may be very pleasant, intelligent people, but once they get inside the Palace they're riveted to the status quo and they lose track of public opinion in the real world. — Anthony Holden

How sad is it that this tiff sort of cheers me up? If two of the most distinguished, dedicated, and thoughtful public servants in the history of this republic could not find a way to agree to disagree, how can we expect the current crop of congressional blockheads to get along? While — Sarah Vowell

Correlation between the growing lack of respect for ideas and the imagination and the increasing gap between rich and poor in America, reflected not just in the gulf between the salaries of CEOs and their employees but also in the high cost of education, the incredible divide between private and public schools that makes all of the fine speeches by our policy makers - most of whom send their children to private schools anyway, just as they enjoy the benefits and perks of their jobs as servants of the people - all the more insidious and insincere. — Azar Nafisi

Mr. Roosevelt has gathered around him a body of public servants who are nowhere surpassed, I question whether they are anywhere equaled, for efficiency, self-sacrifice, and an absolute devotion to their country's interests. Many of them are poor men, without private means, who have voluntarily abandoned high professional ambitions and turned their backs on the rewards of business to serve their country on salaries that are not merely inadequate, but indecently so. — Theodore Roosevelt

I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe. Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing. Make them intelligent, and they will be vigilant; give them the means of detecting the wrong, and they will apply the remedy. — Daniel Webster

Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, 'What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power.' But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector. — Ronald Reagan

Advocacy groups and voters are not wrong to push candidates to declare their position clearly on policy issues. That is good citizenship. Hard questions should be asked of every candidate, every politician. And those public servants should be prepared to answer, but in their own words. — Mark McKinnon

Data indicate that taxpayers may be paying their public servants more than a little too much. — Jason Chaffetz

The librarian of today, and it will be true still more of the librarians of tomorrow, are not fiery dragons interposed between the people and the books. They are useful public servants, who manage libraries in the interest of the public ... Many still think that a great reader, or a writer of books, will make an excellent librarian. This is pure fallacy. — William Osler

The Viennese wash everything. Where else in the world does the government hire public servants to wash public telephone booths and the glass over traffic lights? Every time I see someone doing these things, I smile like a child. — Jonathan Carroll

There'll be some savings from preventing double dipping by public servants which are currently able to access not one but two fully tax payer funded schemes and of course there will be out paid parental leave levy. So all up not only is this an important economic reform, an important reform to have to grow our economy more strongly, it also will leave the budget better off which will help us fix the mess that Labor has created with the budget. — Tony Abbott

Just a donation request to support the brave public servants of Los Angeles during this time of budgetary shortfalls. — Kate Danley

It's painful to believe that the would-be 'public servants' you're forced to choose between are all phonies whose only real concern is their own care and feeding and who will lie so outrageously and with such a straight face that you know they've just got to believe you're an idiot. — David Foster Wallace

Men may make progress, but man never changes. Man loves power and money. No matter the skin color, religion or income level. These symbols of our nation make men drunk with power, who then justify their lust for more by claiming they are public servants. — Glenn Beck

The American national security state is totally bipartisan. My biggest problem is with the Democrats, like Feinstein and Pelosi, who are defending it because there is a Democrat in the White House, and they are party loyalists and hacks before they are public servants. — Glenn Greenwald

I have criticisms of Ronald Reagan, but he lives in another universe from the kind of political theater that is represented by people, like Sarah Palin, who aren't really public servants. — Eugene Jarecki

A motto of many politicians, public servants and money bags: Ask not 'What can I do for you?' but 'What can I do you for? — H.M. Forester

You may not personally remember Vietnam or Watergate, but it's a good bet you remember "No new taxes" and "Out of the loop" and "No direct knowledge of any impropriety at this time" and "Did not inhale" and "Did not have sex with that Ms. Lewinsky" and etc. etc. It's painful to believe that the would-be "public servants" you're forced to choose between are all phonies whose only real concern is their own care and feeding and who will lie so outrageously and with such a straight face that you know they've just got to believe you're an idiot. So who wouldn't yawn and turn away, trade apathy and cynicism for the hurt of getting treated with contempt? — David Foster Wallace

People who are government servants, public servants, should not be paid more than the taxpayers who are paying for it. — Mitt Romney

So, I think that when we become civilized, great corporations will make provision for men who have given their lives to their service. I think the great railroads should pay pensions to their worn out employees. They should take care of them in old age. They should not maim and wear out their servants and then discharge them, and allow them to be supported in poorhouses. These great companies should take care of the men they maim; they should look out for the ones whose lives they have used and whose labor has been the foundation of their prosperity. Upon this question, public sentiment should be aroused to such a degree that these corporations would be ashamed to use a human life and then throw away the broken old man as they would cast aside a rotten tie. — Robert G. Ingersoll

He wanted me to understand two big things: First, that nobody, no group, is above others. Public servants are obliged to level with everybody, whether or not they'll like what he has to say. And second, that politics was a matter of personal honor. A man's word is his bond. You give your word, you keep it. For as long as I can remember, I've had a sort of romantic notion of what politics should be- and can be. If you do politics the right way, I believe, you can actually make people's lives better. And integrity is the minimum ante to get into the game. Nearly forty years after I first got involved, I remain captivated by the possibilities of politics and public service. In fact, I believe- as I know my grandpop did- that my chosen profession is a noble calling. — Joe Biden

The police have lost sight of the fact that they are public servants. — Steven Magee

Let the record show that you can be a United States senator for 21 years. You can be 79 years old. You can be the chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and one of the most recognizable and widely-respected veteran public servants in your nation. But if you are female while all of those things, men who you defeat in arguments will still respond to you by calling you hysterical and telling you to calm down. They'll patronize you and say they admire your passion, 'sweetie,' but they deal in facts, not your silly, girly feelings. It's inescapable. You can set your watch by it. — Dianne Feinstein

Bureaucrats do not, as a whole, like to make decisions. Decisions require a degree of courage and responsibility, qualities in short supply among public servants on both sides of the Great Divide. — Kati Marton

It is only when there is the supervision and critical oversight from the people that the government will be in a position to do an even better job, and employees of government departments will be the true public servants of the people. — Wen Jiabao

The People of God have to elect public servants who know the difference between serving the public and killing the public, and that those who can't tell the difference don't belong in public office. — Frank Pavone

What if we were to subject public servants like politicians to a battery of psychological tests like the MMPI? Maybe we could determine which of them were more likely to become corrupt and save them the trouble of lengthy, expensive campaigns where they are ultimately harassed by greedy corporations. — Aaron B. Powell

Law enforcement officers are never 'off duty.' They are dedicated public servants who are sworn to protect public safety at any time and place that the peace is threatened. They need all the help that they can get. — Barbara Boxer

Public servants in this Europe often do their best when they stop caring about whether they'll be fired. — Ron Suskind

In essence, we're their servants who help them and who guard them from the public. (Leo)
Oh gee, golly, goodie, Mr. Leo! Can I have my eyes gouged out, too? (Susan) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

The United States is considered a puritanical society by many Western nations. For example, they can't believe we hassle public servants like General David Petraeus because he had a mistress. In France, if a powerful man doesn't have a mistress, he's considered a wimp. — Bill O'Reilly

All of us here are servants of the reading public. I am the head of the servants and I must show that I know better than any of the servants where the materials are found. I want to show that our service here is efficient and that we are really working to serve. — Epifanio De Los Santos

Firefighters are some of the most selfless public servants you will ever encounter. — Denis Leary

Your public servants serve you right; indeed often they serve you better than your apathy and indifference deserve. — Adlai Stevenson I

It's incumbent on good public servants to maintain their voices and originality of thinking. — Ronan Farrow

The cause of the South was the cause of constitutional government, the cause of government regulated by law, and the cause of honesty and fidelity in public servants. No nobler cause did man ever fight for! — Benjamin Franklin

Government employees are public servants and prohibited by the Constitution from inhibiting religious freedom, that is a far cry from sneaking around and into a church and acting like KGB agents. — Mathew Staver

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

I believe that Bill Clinton will be remembered as one of our nation's great Presidents, and Senator Clinton as one of our nation's great public servants. — Joe Andrew

There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence.
I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing. — Daniel Webster

The systematic abuse with which the newspapers of one side assail every candidate coming forward on the other, is the cause of many honorable men, who have a regard to their reputation, being deterred from entering public life; and of the people being thus deprived of some better servants than any they have. — Harriet Martineau

The simple index fund solution has been adopted as a cornerstone of investment strategy for many of the nation's pension plans operated by our giant corporations and state and local governments. Indexing is also the predominant strategy for the largest of them all, the retirement plan for federal government employees, the Federal Thrift Savings Plan (TSP). The plan has been a remarkable success, and now holds some $173 billion of assets for the benefit of our public servants and members of armed services. — David F. Swensen

What the public hates the most is when they think the politicians aren't listening to them. They understand that we can't solve all their problems with a snap of our fingers, but they sure want us to try because we are public servants. — Chuck Schumer

The people must remain ever vigilant against tyrants masquerading as public servants. — George Washington

That public virtue which among the ancients was denominated patriotism, is derived from a strong sense of our own interest in the preservation and prosperity of the free government of which we are members. Such a sentiment, which had rendered the legions of the republic almost invincible, could make but a very feeble impression on the mercenary servants of a despotic prince; and it became necessary to supply that defect by other motives, of a different, but not less forcible nature; honour and religion. — Edward Gibbon

So long as the mental and moral instruction of man is left solely in the hands of hired servants of the public
let them be teachers of religion, professors of colleges, authors of books, or editors of journals or periodical publications, dependent upon their literary incomes for their daily bread, so long shall we hear but half the truth; and well if we hear so much. Our teachers, political, scientific, moral, or religious; our writers, grave or gay, are compelled to administer to our prejudices and to perpetuate our ignorance. — Frances Wright

We need to remember that the separation of church and state must never mean the separation of religious values from the lives of public servants ... If we who serve free men today are to differ from the tyrants of this age, we must balance the powers in our hands with God in our hearts. — Lyndon B. Johnson

Our country is too large to have all its affairs directed by a single government. Public servants at such a distance, and from under the eye of their constituents, must, from the circumstance of distance, be unable to administer and overlook all the details necessary for the good government of the citizens; and the same circumstance, by rendering detection impossible to their constituents, will invite public agents to corruption, plunder and waste. — Thomas Jefferson

The heroes who emerged first from the rubble of the September 11 attacks were not politicians or generals and they didnt become household names in the months that followed. They were, instead, public servants who continued to work day in and day out to protect our communities and ensure hometown security. — Ben Nelson

Senator Kennedy inspired so many with his decades of service, so I can't think of a more fitting tribute then working to educate and motivate future generations of citizens and public servants alike. — Hillary Clinton

There is a human capital crisis in the federal government. Not only are we losing the decades of talent as civil servants retire, we are not doing enough to develop and nurture the next generation of public servants. — Daniel Akaka

Alaska did not produce supermen, but in its formative periods it was served by men of character and determination, and it is a fortunate land which knows such public servants. — James A. Michener

Valuing public servants would boost morale among those on the front line of implementing government policy. — Charles Kennedy

By the time the think-tank lifers arrived in Baghdad, the crucial roles in the reconstruction had already been outsourced to Halliburton and KPMG. THeir job as the public servants was simply to administer the petty cash, which in Iraq took the form of handling shrink-wrapped bricks of hundred-dollar bills to contractors. It was a graphic glimpse into the acceptable role of government in a corporatist state - to act as a conveyor belt for getting public money into private hands, a job for which ideological commitment is far more relevant than elaborate field experience. — Naomi Klein

Americans have learned to trust free markets. Republican or Democrat, we believe the unimpeded exchange of goods and services will yield better solutions than five-year plans set by even the most well-meaning public servants. — John Katzman

Because technically actors are just public servants really. They just tell stories because people need to be told stories. That's all it is. And yet we get treated as though we're important. — James McAvoy

I can be a champion and a public servant also. — Manny Pacquiao

One night, the Duarte girl, sang poems set to music in a voice so clear I felt my soul rise up inside my ear. In a garden of clematis, with servants dressed like Gypsies placing candles in the trees, we assembled on the grass, between a Belgian wood and {the Duchess of Lorraine}'s glassy pond. In a pale orange gown I read two pieces I'd prepared...When the ladies clapped their approval in the dark, everything, to me, was suddenly bright and near. — Danielle Dutton

Teachers are our greatest public servants; they spend their lives educating our young people and shaping our Nation for tomorrow. — Solomon Ortiz

Early Trans-Atlantic Voyages
"Since Columbus' discovery of the islands in the Caribbean, the number of Spanish ships that ventured west across the Atlantic had consistently increased. For reasons of safety in numbers, the ships usually made the transit in convoys, carrying nobility, public servants and conquistadors on the larger galleons that had a crew of 180 to 200. On these ships a total of 40 to 50 passengers had their own cabins amidships. These ships carried paintings, finished furniture, fabric and, of course, gold on the return trip. The smaller vessels including the popular caravels had a crew of only 30, but carried as many people as they could fit in the cargo holds. Normally they would carry about 100 lesser public servants, soldiers, and settlers, along with farm animals and equipment, seeds, plant cuttings and diverse manufactured goods. — Hank Bracker

It turns out the voter's lied. Just like the accusations that they always throw at hard-working public servants, the goddamned electorate turned out to be goddamned liars themselves. They said they respected hard work, commitment and moral courage. They said that the candidate's opponent had lost their vote the moment she gave up on reasoned discourse and calm authority. But when they went into the voting booths in their hundreds, and thousands, and tens of thousands, they'd thought, You know what, though, she's strong. She'd show them. — Naomi Alderman

Our problem in the 2015 general election was that for all the good stuff that was in the Labour manifesto, we were still going to be freezing public sector wages, cutting council expenditure, laying off civil servants. We were offering 'austerity light' instead of a real alternative. — Jeremy Corbyn

If you would rule the world quietly, you must keep it amused." I notice too, that the ground on which eminent public servants urge the claims of popular education is fear: "This country is filling up with thousands and millions of voters, and you must educate them to keep them from our throats. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Words without deeds is an affront to the principle that guides our Nation and makes a mockery of the values we as public servants claim to love. — Jon Corzine

Millions of public workers have become a kind of privileged new class - a new elite, who live better than their private sector counterparts. Public servants have become the public's masters. No wonder the public is upset. — Mortimer Zuckerman

Canberra was my home for many years, and there's a lot to love about it. It has a small population with a strong sense of community and is top-heavy with interesting, highly educated, socially progressive people - the opposite of the stereotypical image of dull public servants. — Judy Horacek

Why are congressmen called public servants? You never see servants that anxious to keep their jobs. — Robert Quillen

I respect the office of the presidency, but I never worship at the shrines of our public servants ... The Washington press corps has the privilege of asking the president of the United States what he is doing and why. — Helen Thomas