Officials Quotes - Page 31

• A raised eyebrow, an inflection of the voice, a caustic remark dropped in the middle of a broadcast can raise doubts in a million minds about the veracity of a public official or the wisdom of a governmental policy.

  Spiro T. Agnew

  Eyebrows, Voice, Doubt

  "Spiro Agnew's Media Legacy: Trump, Obama and Time Magazine" by Jeffrey Lord, www.newsbusters.org. February 11, 2017.

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• I am persuaded that in the case of elected officials, the overwhelming temptation is to conclude that it is more important for your constituents that you be reelected than that you deal honestly with them.

  James L. Buckley

  Temptation, Important, Cases

  James L. Buckley (2010). “Freedom at Risk: Reflections on Politics, Liberty, and the State”, p.246, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Tell me why the limousine fleet has increased by 42 percent since Barack Obama took office. Why are we spending taxpayers' money on that? Limos should be for weddings and proms, certainly not for government officials to be riding around in.

  Mark Neumann

  Government, Office, Limos

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• The Republican Party did not disparage the ruling class, because most of its officials are or would like to be part of it.

  Angelo Codevilla

  Party, Class, Republican

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• Once he saw the officials of a temple leading away some one who had stolen a bowl belonging to the treasurers, and said, "The great thieves are leading away the little thief."

  Diogenes

  Saws, Temples, Thieves

  "Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, Book 6: The Cynics". Book by Diogenes Laërtius translated by R. D. Hicks, 1925.

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• It is a rather curious thing to have to divide one's life into personal and official compartments and temporarily put the personal side into its hidden compartment to be taken out again when one's official duties are at an end.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  Taken, Sides, Curious

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• It may be laid down as a primary position, and the basis of our system, that every Citizen who enjoys the protection of a free Government, owes not only a proportion of his property, but even his personal services to the defence of it, and consequently that the Citizens of America (with a few legal and official exceptions) from 18 to 50 Years of Age should be borne on the Militia Rolls, provided with uniform Arms, and so far accustomed to the use of them, that the Total strength of the Country might be called forth at a Short Notice on any very interesting Emergency.

  George Washington

  Country, Military, Years

  "Sentiments on a Peace Establishment". Letter to Alexander Hamilton on May 02, 1783. "The Writings of George Washington", edited by John C. Fitzpatrick, Volume 26, p. 289, 1938.

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• The Constitution does not protect the sovereignty of States for the benefit of the States or state governments as abstract political entities, or even for the benefit of the public officials governing the States. To the contrary, the Constitution divides authority between federal and state governments for the protection of individuals.

  Sandra Day O'Connor

  Government, Political, Doe

  New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144 (1992), June 19, 1992.

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• Under fascism, citizens retain the responsibilities of owning property, without freedom to act and without any of the advantages of ownership. Under socialism, government officials acquire all the advantages of ownership, without any of the responsibilities, since they do not hold title to the property, but merely the right to use it -- at least until the next purge. In either case, the government officials hold the economic, political and legal power of life or death over the citizens.

  Ayn Rand

  Responsibility, Government, Political

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• Neither federal nor state government acts compatibly with equal protection when a law or official policy denies to women, simply because they are women, full citizenship stature - equal opportunity to aspire, achieve, participate in and contribute to society based on their individual talents and capacities.

  Ruth Bader Ginsburg

  Opportunity, Government, Law

  Ruth Bader Ginsburg (2016). “My Own Words”, p.348, Simon and Schuster

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• In order for the State in the person of school officials to justify prohibition of a particular expression of opinion, it must be able to show that its action was caused by something more than a mere desire to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular viewpoint.

  Abe Fortas

  School, Expression, Order

  Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 1969.

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• The physical power to get the money does not seem to me a test of the right to tax. Might does not make right even in taxation. To hold that what the use of official authority may get the state may keep, and that if it cannot get hold of a nonresident stockholder it may hold the company as hostage for him, is strange constitutional doctrine to me.

  Robert H. Jackson

  Doe, Doctrine, Use

  "International Harvester Co. v. Wisconsin Dept. of Taxation, 322 U.S. 435, 450". Judicial opinion, 1944.

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• Writers cannot let themselves be servants of the official mythology. They have to, whatever the cost, say what truth they have to say.

  Tobias Wolff

  Writing, Cost, Mythology

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• I want everyone to vote. I want everyone to be a part of electing officials. Because when we are not a part, when we don't have a very broad voter base, then we don't have true representation.

  Clay Aiken

  Want, Voters, Broads

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• Active liberty is particularly at risk when law restricts speech directly related to the shaping of public opinion, for example, speech that takes place in areas related to politics and policy-making by elected officials. That special risk justifies especially strong pro-speech judicial presumptions. It also justifies careful review whenever the speech in question seeks to shape public opinion, particularly if that opinion in turn will affect the political process and the kind of society in which we live.

  Stephen Breyer

  Strong, Policy Making, Law

  "Active Liberty: Interpreting Our Democratic Constitution". Book by Stephen Breyer, 2008.

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• I grow ominously tired of official confinement. Thirty years have I served the Philistines, and my neck is not subdued to the yoke. You don't know how wearisome it is to breathe the air of four pent walls without relief day after day, all the golden hours of the day between ten and four without ease or interposition ... these pestilential clerk-faces always in one's dish. O for a few years between the grave and the desk!

  Charles Lamb

  Wall, Tired, Air

  Charles Lamb, Thomas Noon Talfourd (1838). “The letters of Charles Lamb, with a sketch of his life. The poetical works”, p.196

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• I am struck again by the fact that as soon as a working man gets an official post in the Trade Union or goes into Labour politics, he becomes middle-class whether he will or no. ie. by fighting against the bourgeoisie he becomes a bourgeois. The fact is that you cannot help living in the manner appropriate and developing the ideology appropriate to your income.

  George Orwell

  Fighting, Men, Class

  "The Road to Wigan Pier". Book by George Orwell (Diary 6-10 February), March 8, 1937.

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• The Yippie demonstrations were merely an attack of mental disobedience on an obediently insane society... and if you feel you have been living in an unreal world for the last couple of years, it is particularly because this power structure has refused to listen to reason... Step outside the guidelines of the official umpires and make your own rules and your own reality.

  Phil Ochs

  Couple, Reality, Years

  "An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Period". Book by Charles DeBenedetti, 1990.

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• You know I've had people come up and ask me to sign their guns. Sign my name on gun handles and holsters and stuff. I've done it once or twice for law enforcement officials, but when people do that -- and there have been quite a few of them lately -- I always tell them no. I don't want to do that. I don't want my name on that and I hope you use this gun, whatever its purpose is, I hope it's used wisely.

  Clint Eastwood

  Gun, Law, Names

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• The quintessential revolution is that of the spirit, born of an intellectual conviction of the need for change in those mental attitudes and values which shape the course of a nation's development. A revolution which aims merely at changing official policies and institutions with a view to an improvement in material conditions has little chance of genuine success. Without a revolution of the spirit, the forces which produced the iniquities of the old order would continue to be operative, posing a constant threat to the process of reform and regeneration.

  Aung San Suu Kyi

  Attitude, Views, Order

  "Freedom from Fear". Book by Aung San Suu Kyi, 1991.

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• I shall always rebel against any attempt to reduce a human being to a kind of mannequin, whose deeds and questions would be comprehensible like the deeds and gestures of monarchs recorded day after day in official communiques. Six months of a life cannot catalogue the vitality, the activity of an individual; only death stops development and then, what is important is the overall meaning of a life, not the details of that life, edifying to some, scandalous to others.

  Louis Aragon

  Important, Vitality, Rebel

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• I recall this sergeant's informing me and my "room-mates" of this rather deplorable fact the army didn't have any official, excuse me, didn't have no official song and suggested that we work on this in our copious free time.

  Tom Lehrer

  Song, Army, Rooms

  "Introduction to 'It Makes a Fellow Proud to be a Soldier'". CD Audio "An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer", March 20-21, 1959.

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• However many people complain about the "red tape," it would be sheer illusion to think ... continuous administrative work can be carried out in any field except by means of officials working in offices.... The choice is only that between bureaucracy and dillettantism.

  Max Weber

  Mean, Thinking, People

  1922 Collected in Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (eds) Economy and Society (1978), ch.3.

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• I don't like this official/unofficial distinction. It sound, er, officious.

  Larry Wall

  Sound, Distinction

  Usenet article <199702221943.LAA20388@wall.org>, 1997.

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• It is ironic since whenever I have met with our elected officials they are invariably thoughtful, well-meaning people. And yet collectively 90% of their effort seems to be focused on how to stick it to the other party.

  Sergey Brin

  Party, Thoughtful, People

  "Sergey Brin, Google Co-Founder, Wishes Obama Wasn’t A Democrat" by Dino Grandoni, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 11, 2012.

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