Public Office Quotes - Page 3

• When I started out in public life there used to be a saying we'd hear from time to time, that every man who runs for public office will claim that he was born in a log cabin he built with his own hands. Well, my mother knew better. And she made sure I did too.

  William J. Clinton

  Mother, Running, Men

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• Well, it's always, though, safer in politics to avoid risk, to just kind of go along with the status quo. But I didn't get into government to do the safe and easy things. A ship in harbor is safe, but that's not why the ship is built. Politics isn't just a game of competing interests and clashing parties. The people of America expect us to seek public office and to serve for the right reasons. And the right reason is to challenge the status quo and to serve the common good.

  Sarah Palin

  Party, Government, Games

  Sarah Palin's speech as Running Mate of John McCain in Dayton, Ohio, www.washingtonpost.com.

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• Extremist groups like People for the American Way attack Christians who run for public office as a threat to the 'separation of church and state,' though they never specify why conservatives are any more of a threat than churchmen and church women on the Left who have led religiously inspired causes for decades.

  Ronald H. Nash

  Christian, Running, Religious

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• I always felt, and I still feel, that the media doesn't belong in a public official's private life. It's a very difficult balance, because if you are elected to public office, people have a right to know a great deal about you, and the press has an absolute obligation to report all of that. But the reality is that there are times in which the reporting is really happening for almost voyeuristic reasons, in the gossip columns. Maybe half of it is wrong, and half of it is correct, and a lot of it is exaggerated. You've just got to get used to that if you're in public life.

  Rudy Giuliani

  Reality, Media, People

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• Every politician just has to remember how he got his position in the first place. A young candidate running for Congress or any outsider interested in public office could only achieve his goals by relying on soft power. They could not force anyone to vote for them. They needed to convince their potential voters, they needed to do fundraising, they needed to be attractive candidates.

  Joseph Nye

  Running, Fundraising, Goal

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• I wouldn't have the slightest interest in running for public office. I'd rather make jokes about politicians than become one of them.

  Johnny Carson

  Running, Office, Politician

  Source: www.alex-haley.com

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• The United States Constitution is clear. It prohibits religious tests for public office.

  Jeb Bush

  Religious, Office, Tests

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• 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

  Betrayal, America, Government

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• To get your name well enough known that you can run for a public office, some people do it by being great lawyers or philanthropists or business people or work their way up the political ladder. I happened to become known from a different route.

  John Glenn

  Running, Names, Space

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• I was one of the first 18-year-olds in the United States elected to public office right after 18-year-olds got the right to vote back in the early '70s. I ran for the Board of Education.

  Michael Moore

  Years, Office, Firsts

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• Members of Congress are incredibly blessed and fortune to have the jobs that we have. Nobody makes us run. Every two years we offer for public office, and if you don't want to do it then don't run. But the notion that you can make $174,000 in this country and be underpaid is laughable.

  Trey Gowdy

  Running, Country, Jobs

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• 

  No diet will remove all the fat from your body because the brain is entirely fat. Without a brain, you might look good, but all you could do is run for public office.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Running, Loss, Office

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• Don't try to be somebody you're not because it doesn't work. If you try to be this perfect person or perfect persona of what you think that somebody should be when they're involved in public office, it's just not going to work. Just be yourself, stay true to your core values, and really just stay abreast of the issues.

  Ben Quayle

  Being Yourself, Thinking, Issues

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• I will undoubtedly have to seek what is happily known as gainful employment, which I am glad to say does not describe holding public office.

  Dean Acheson

  Work, Office, Doe

  In Time 22 Dec. 1952

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• The State, in choosing men to serve it, takes no notice of their opinions. If they be willing faithfully to serve it, that satisfies.

  Oliver Cromwell

  Men, Opinion, States

  1644 Said before the Battle of Marston Moor, 2 Jul.

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• 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

  Running, Country, Thinking

  "CNN’s John King stands by his first debate question to Newt Gingrich". Interview With John King, cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com. January 20, 2012.

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

  Herbert Hoover

  Children, Office, Nerd

  "On Growing Up: Letters to American Boys and Girls". Book by Herbert Hoover, 1962.

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• If somebody harbours delusions, I think that should disqualify them from office, regardless whether the delusions are religious. Letting someone who thinks the god Jehovah will bail him out serve in public office is like letting a man who believes in Santa Claus run a Toys 'R Us.
  The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie - deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

  John F. Kennedy

  Running, Religious, Lying

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• I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute - where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishoners for whom to vote - where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference - and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

  John F. Kennedy

  Believe, School, Men

  Address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, delivered 12 September 1960 at the Rice Hotel in Houston, TX

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• The new political gospel: public office is private graft.

  Mark Twain

  Office, Political, Politics

  Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.363, Courier Corporation

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• 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

  Country, Jesus, Years

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• No people is wholly civilized where a distinction is drawn between stealing an office and stealing a purse.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  People, Office, President

  Theodore Roosevelt (2015). “Theodore Roosevelt on Bravery: Lessons from the Most Courageous Leader of the Twentieth Century”, p.81, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• We say that someone occupies an official position, whereas it is the official position that occupies him.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Sea, Position, Officials

  "Aphorisms". Book by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Notebook F 47, 1799.

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• A public man must never forget that he loses his usefulness when he as an individual, rather than his policy, becomes the issue.

  Richard M. Nixon

  Men, Issues, Never Forget

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• 1992 became known as the 'Year of the Woman' because so many of us were elected to public office that November, including a record six to the United States Senate.

  Dee Dee Myers

  Years, Office, United States

  "Getting Beyond 'Firsts'” by Dee Dee Myers, www.huffingtonpost.com. September 8, 2010.

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