Public Officials Quotes

• I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people except for a few public officials.

  George Mason

  Gun, People, Second Amendment

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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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• Crony capitalism is essentially a condition in which... public officials are giving favours to people in the private sector in payment of political favours.

  Alan Greenspan

  Dark, Giving, People

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• I am not here as a public official, but as a citizen of a troubled world who finds hope in a growing consensus that the generally accepted goals of society are peace, freedom, human rights, environmental quality, the alleviation of suffering, and the rule of law.

  Jimmy Carter

  Peace, Freedom, Rights

  Jimmy Carter (2014). “The Jimmy Carter Library”, p.1029, Simon and Schuster

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• I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials; and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

  John F. Kennedy

  Religious, Believe, America

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

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• As a public official and being so highly visible, I have a responsibility to make it very clear that those people who will have cancer at one point in their lives will be able to function.

  Lindy Boggs

  Cancer, Responsibility, Sea

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• Notions of property, value, ownership, and the nature of wealth itself are changing more fundamentally than at any time since the Sumerians first poked cuneiform into wet clay and called it stored grain ... few people are aware of the enormity of this shift and fewer of them are lawyers or public officials.

  John Perry Barlow

  Change, People, Firsts

  "The Economy of Ideas" by John Perry Barlow, www.wired.com. March 01, 1994.

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• There is nothing new and nothing truthful in the false accusations against public officials make by the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation today, ... The simple reality is that the Schaghticoke fail to meet the criteria for federal recognition.

  Richard Blumenthal

  Simple, Reality, Today

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• I propose a Constitutional Amendment providing that, if any public official, elected or appointed, at any level of government, is caught lying to any member of the public for any reason, the punishment shall be death by public hanging.

  L. Neil Smith

  Lying, Government, Sea

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• Officeholders are the agents of the people, not their masters. Not only is their time and labor due to the government, but they should scrupulously avoid in their political action, as well as in the discharge of their official duty, offending by a display of obtrusive partisanship their neighbors who have relations with them as public officials.

  Grover Cleveland

  Government, Offending, People

  Grover Cleveland, United States. President (1885-1889 : Cleveland), United States. President (1893-1897 : Cleveland) (1968). “Grover Cleveland, 1837-1908: chronology, documents, bibliographical aids”

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• I can imagine no greater disservice to the country than to establish a system of censorship that would deny to the people of a free republic like our own their indisputable right to criticize their own public officials. While exercising the great powers of the office I hold, I would regret in a crisis like the one through which we are now passing to lose the benefit of patriotic and intelligent criticism.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Country, Regret, Patriotic

  Woodrow Wilson (1983). “The Papers of Woodrow Wilson”

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• We have to repair that trust ... I think anytime a public official lies, he undermines his own authority and squanders the public trust.

  Bill Bradley

  Lying, Thinking, Deceit

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• Debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust and wide-open and that...may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.

  William J. Brennan

  Issues, Government, Freedom Of Speech

  New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964)

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• ...the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

  Robert Kennedy

  Marriage, Country, Children

  Robert F. Kennedy, Edwin O. Guthman (1993). “RFK: collected speeches”, Viking Pr

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• More is required of public officials than slogans and handshakes and press releases. More is required. We must hold ourselves strictly accountable. We must provide the people with a vision of the future.

  Barbara Jordan

  Inspirational, Future, Government

  1976 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address, delivered 12 July 1976, New York, NY

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• If we promise as public officials, we must deliver. If we as public officials propose, we must produce.

  Barbara Jordan

  Promise, Politics, Produce

  1976 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address, delivered 12 July 1976, New York, NY

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• Citizen participation is a device whereby public officials induce nonpublic individuals to act in a way the officials desire.

  Daniel Patrick Moynihan

  Desire, Liberty, Citizens

  Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1970). “Toward a national urban policy”

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• The freedom to criticize judges and other public officials is necessary to a vibrant democracy.

  Sandra Day O'Connor

  Judging, Democracy, Intimidation

  "My Exclusive Interview with Justice Sandra Day O’Connor". Interview with Marianne Schnall, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 29, 2009.

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• The freedom to criticize judges and other public officials is necessary to a vibrant democracy. The problem comes when healthy criticism is replaced with more destructive intimidation and sanctions.

  Sandra Day O'Connor

  Judging, Healthy, Democracy

  Interview with Marianne Schnall, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 29, 2009.

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• Our public officials have forgotten that they are ultimately accountable to the people who put them in office, that the information they keep in secrecy belongs to all of us. Julian Assange took a courageous step by rightfully returning what belongs to the public domain. For that reason, I believe we need to stand behind him.

  Yoko Ono

  People, Office, Information

  "Yoko Ono Honors Julian Assange With Special Annual Courage Award" by Jordan Zakarin, www.hollywoodreporter.com. February 04, 2013.

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• 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

  Sea, People, Example

  1976 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address, delivered 12 July 1976, New York, NY

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• All students, members of the faculty, and public officials in both Mississippi and the Nation will be able, it is hoped, to return to their normal activities with full confidence in the integrity of American law. This is as it should be, for our Nation is founded on the principle that observance of the law is the eternal safeguard of liberty and defiance of the law is the surest road to tyranny.

  John F. Kennedy

  Freedom, Integrity, Law

  Radio and Television Report to the Nation on the Situation at the University of Mississippi, September 30, 1962.

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• Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Country, Truth, Mean

  Theodore Roosevelt (2015). “Theodore Roosevelt on Bravery: Lessons from the Most Courageous Leader of the Twentieth Century”, p.42, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• The chief internal enemies of any state are not spies nor saboteurs nor the paid agents of foreign governments. They are, on the contrary, those myriads of public officials who betray the trust imposed upon them by the people.

  Dalton Trumbo

  Betrayal, People, Enemy

  "The Remarkable Andrew: The Chronicle of a Literal Man".

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• The budget should be balanced, the treasury should be refilled, the public debt should be reduced and the arrogance of public officials should be controlled.

  Ross Perot

  Arrogance, Debt, Economy

  United States. Congress. Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress, H. Ross Perot (1993). “Ethics Reform: Testimony of H. Ross Perot : Hearing Before the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress, One Hundred Third Congress, First Session ... March 2, 1993”

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