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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• The public does not like you to mislead or represent yourself to be something you're not. And the other thing that the public really does like is the self-examination to say, you know, I'm not perfect. I'm just like you. They don't ask their public officials to be perfect. They just ask them to be smart, truthful, honest, and show a modicum of good sense.

  Ann Richards

  Smart, Self, Perfect

  "Ann Richards Discusses Texas, Politics and Humor". "Larry King Live", transcripts.cnn.com. January 23, 2001.

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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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• Brian Walker and David Salt have written a thoughtful and powerful book to help resource users and managers put resilience thinking into practice and aim toward increasing the sustainability of our world. I urge public officials, scholars, and students in public policy programs to place this volume on their list of must-read books. It is a powerful antidote to the overly simplified proposals too often offered as solutions to contemporary problems at multiple scales.

  Elinor Ostrom

  Powerful, Book, Thinking

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• We went across the South on Super Tuesday without a single catcall or boo, without a single ugly sign. Not until we got to New York and the North did the litmus test of race and religion spout from the mouths of public officials.

  Jesse Jackson

  New York, Race, Tuesday

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• The safest course for public officials is simply to throw all of the money in a sack.

  Dave Freudenthal

  Courses, Officials

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• People are tired of wasteful government programs and welfare chiselers, and they are angry about the constant spiral of taxes and government regulations, arrogant bureaucrats, and public officials who think all of mankind's problems can be solved by throwing the taxpayers dollars at them.

  Ronald Reagan

  Tired, Thinking, Government

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• In view of our public pledges, we public officials can never again go before the public merely promising election reform. The time for promises is past.

  Charles Edison

  Past, Views, Promise

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• I have long thought that his [Rupert Murdoch's] social philosophy was contained in his cartoon show, The Simpsons: all politicians and public officials are crooks, and the masses are a vast lumpen proletariat of deluded and exploitable blowhards.

  Conrad Black

  Philosophy, Long, Cartoon

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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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• If you want to know the people of a nation, I am sure you can judge a great deal more about them from their cooking and eating traditions than you can from the words and actions of their public officials.

  Peter Kropotkin

  Food, People, Judging

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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