Public Office Quotes

A man can of course hold public office, and many a man does hold public office, and lead a public career of a sort, even if there are other men who possess secrets about him which he cannot afford to have divulged. But no man can lead a public career really worth leading, no man can act with rugged independence in serious crises, nor strike at great abuses, nor afford to make powerful and unscrupulous foes, if he is himself vulnerable in his private character. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

In 1840, the year that Victoria and Albert were married, no woman in the kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland could vote, be elected to parliament or any other public office, attend the university, or enter a profession. If a woman married, her property, her earnings, her children, and her body legally belonged to her husband, to do with as he willed. The world of business was more hostile to women in 1840 than it had been in 1740 or 1640, and though many women were forced to work, a bare handful could make a living wage. ~ Gillian Gill

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

My mother at the age of 65 decided she was going to run for mayor. She had never run for public office, and she decided she wanted to try and do some things for the community. ~ Sylvia Mathews Burwell

Believing that only under God Almighty, to Whom we render all homage, do we Americans hold our vast Power, we shall guarantee to all persons absolute freedom of religious worship, provided, however, that no atheist, agnostic, believer in Black Magic, nor any Jew who shall refuse to swear allegiance to the New Testament, nor any person of any faith who refuses to take the Pledge to the Flag, shall be permitted to hold any public office or to practice as a teacher, professor, lawyer, judge, or as a physician, except in the category of Obstetrics. ~ Sinclair Lewis

I have been immeasurably honored to serve the people of Maine for nearly 40 years in public office and for the past 17 years in the United States Senate. It was incredibly difficult to decide that I would not seek a fourth term in the Senate. ~ Olympia Snowe

Our constitutional ban on religious tests for public office is worth less to the non-religious than the sheepskin parchment it was written on was worth to the sheep. ~ Unknown

Sheriff Petersen just went right on getting re-elected, a living testimonial to the fact that you can hold an important public office forever in our country with no qualifications for it but a clean nose, a photogenic face and a close mouth. If on top of that you look good on a horse, you are unbeatable. ~ Raymond Chandler

The new political gospel: public office is private graft. ~ Mark Twain

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

There is more than one way to be Kluxed, and we need to think about ourselves and the kind of people we elect into public office. ~ Stetson Kennedy

All Negroes shall be prohibited from voting, holding public office, practicing law, medicine, or teaching in any class above the grade of grammar school, and they shall be taxed 100 per cent of all sums in excess of $10,000 per family per year which they may earn or in any other manner receive. ~ Sinclair Lewis

Public office is supposed to be a public trust. This is a clear sign of the rampant corruption at the highest levels of the Republican leadership. ~ Bob Etheridge

Never have I trusted Fortune, even when she seemed to offer peace. All those blessings which she kindly bestowed on me - money, public office, influence - I relegated to a place whence she could claim them back without bothering me. I kept a wide gap between them and me, with the result that she has taken them away, not torn them away. ~ Seneca

The third gentleman now stepped forth. A mighty man at cutting and drying, he was; a government officer; in his way (and in most other people's too), a professed pugilist; always in training, always with a system to force down the general throat like a bolus, always to be heard of at the bar of his little Public-office, ready to fight all England. To continue in fistic phraseology, he had a genius for coming up to the scratch, wherever and whatever it was, and proving himself an ugly customer. He would go in and damage any subject whatever with his right, follow up with his left, stop, exchange, counter, bore his opponent (he always fought All England) to the ropes, and fall upon him neatly. He was certain to knock the wind out of common sense, and render that unlucky adversary deaf to the call of time. And he had it in charge from high authority to bring about the great public-office Millennium, when Commissioners should reign upon earth. 'Very ~ Charles Dickens

As Members of Congress, we should not be using public office for private gain. ~ Sheila Jackson Lee

Anybody who runs for public office today has got to know his life or her life will be an open book. I've decided that if you want to run for public office you have to decide at the age of 5 and live accordingly. ~ Helen Thomas

Did he orchestrate the reclusive redcap's rise to become a predator in public office? Plant the swarm of brownies on the mayor's lawn? Promote adoption of the Dewey decimal system in libraries across the continent? It's the not knowing I find most irksome." "The Dewey decimal system?" "It's gaining popularity. I don't trust it." "We'll ~ William Ritter

Different people define "the good life" in different ways. To me, the good life includes active participation in family, church and community. It means making time for playing with kids, teaching them important religious and moral principles in the home, going to church with them and spending enough time with them that they know you care. It requires being a partner with your spouse, allowing him or her to grow in her own right, to spread her wings and fly. It includes participating in the community -- committees, service, voting, perhaps public office. It means having enough financial base that there is some flexibility in life, without which the previous activities just described are very limited. ~ Kenneth Ross French

I wish to extend an invitation to solidarity to everyone, and I would like to encourage those in public office to make every effort to give new impetus to employment, this means caring for the dignity of the person, but above all I would say do not lose hope ... ~ Pope Francis

In a virtuous government, and more especially in times like these, public offices are what they should be - burdens to those appointed to them which it would be wrong to decline, though foreseen to bring them intense labor and great private loss. ~ Thomas Jefferson

I don't claim any moral or ethical high ground, but I also have chosen not to run for public office. Shouldn't there be a higher standard of conduct for public officials? ~ Mark McKinnon

If the benevolent ruler stays in power long enough, he eventually concludes that power and wisdom are the same thing. And as he possesses power, he must possess wisdom. He becomes converted to the seductive thesis that election to public office endows the official with both power and wisdom. At this point, he begins to lose his ability to distinguish between what is morally right and what is politically expedient. ~ Ben Moreell

Formerly, the nobility and the clergy contributed towards the expenses of the State only by voluntary aid and gratuitous gift; their property could not be seized even for debt, - while the plebeian, overwhelmed by taxes and statute-labor, was continually tormented, now by the king's tax-gatherers, now by those of the nobles and clergy. He whose possessions were subject to mortmain could neither bequeath nor inherit property; he was treated like the animals, whose services and offspring belong to their master by right of accession. The people wanted the conditions of ownership to be alike for all; they thought that every one should enjoy and freely dispose of his possessions his income and the fruit of his labor and industry. The people did not invent property; but as they had not the same privileges in regard to it, which the nobles and clergy possessed, they decreed that the right should be exercised by all under the same conditions. The more obnoxious forms of property - statute-labor, mortmain, maîtrise, and exclusion from public office - have disappeared; the conditions of its enjoyment have been modified: the principle still remains the same. There has been progress in the regulation of the right; there has been no revolution. ~ Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Government is a trust, and the officers of the government are trustees. And both the trust and the trustees are created for the benefit of the people. ~ Henry Clay

The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and entailment of a public debt are indications soliciting the employment of the pruning knife. ~ Thomas Jefferson

The phrase public office is a public trust, has of last become common property. ~ Charles Sumner

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know - and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me - has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby. ~ H.L. Mencken

I think we have a number of young people - like yourself - who want to make a difference. I'm not sure the numbers are as large because I think the burden of getting elected to public office at the national level has become astronomically expensive. ~ Birch Bayh

I've always been a reformer all the time I served in public office, and remain a reformer in Ohio, but I also know how to get things done. And I think it's important that, while we acknowledge the anxieties that Americans have, I think it's also important we realize at the end of the day, we need to have somebody who knows how to land a plane, and I've landed quite a few planes ~ John Kasich

Public employment contributes neither to advantage nor happiness. It is but honorable exile from one's family and affairs. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Politicians seldom if ever get [into public office] by merit alone, at least in democratic states. Sometimes, to be sure, it happens, but only by a kind of miracle. They are chosen normally for quite different reasons, the chief of which is simply their power to impress and enchant the intellectually underprivileged… Will any of them venture to tell the plain truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the situation of the country, foreign or domestic? Will any of them refrain from promises that he knows he can't fulfill - that no human being could fulfill? Will any of them utter a word, however obvious, that will alarm or alienate any of the huge pack of morons who cluster at the public trough, wallowing in the pap that grows thinner and thinner, hoping against hope?

Answer: maybe for a few weeks at the start… But not after the issue is fairly joined, and the struggle is on in earnest… They will all promise every man, woman and child in the country whatever he, she or it wants. They'll all be roving the land looking for chances to make the rich poor, to remedy the irremediable, to succor the unsuccorable, to unscramble the unscrambleable, to dephlogisticate the undephlogisticable. They will all be curing warts by saying words over them, and paying off the national debt with money no one will have to earn. When one of them demonstrates that twice two is five, another will prove that it is six, six and a half, ten, twenty, n.

In brief, they w ~ H.L. Mencken

I would wonder how this man, who could not handle so much as a single email from a random party worker, could possibly handle the pressure of any public office, let alone that of a Prime Minister. ~ Reham Khan

You don't run for public office unless you have a specific vision. You are driven by ideas and a vision. ~ Julie Nixon Eisenhower

If America is to survive, we must elect more God-centered men and women to public office; individuals who will seek Divine guidance in the affairs of state. ~ Billy Graham

At the end of our lives, we will not be judged by the highest public office we attained in our lifetime, if that were true the current president (George W. Bush) would hold as much esteem as Franklin Roosevelt in our country, and Nelson Mandela in his. That cannot be the case. Rather, we will each be judged by the mark we've left on others. ~ Elizabeth Edwards

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office. ~ Aesop

In creating superdelegates, the Democratic Party recognized the expertise that its top holders of public office have gained by running for office themselves. They are experts at winning. They know the issues. They are in a unique position to evaluate presidential candidates. ~ Jim Hunt

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 parishioners 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.

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.

[Remarks to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, September 12 1960] ~ John F. Kennedy

Public office is a public trust. ~ Daniel S. Lamont

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

Public office is the last refuge of a scoundrel. ~ Senator Boies Penrose

Jesus was too smart to ever run for public office ... that's what Jesus would do. ~ Mike Huckabee

Accountability in public office is but one manifestation of this cultural inheritance, and we should not be surprised that it is the first thing to disappear when the utopians and the planners take over. ~ Roger Scruton

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

I truly believe that before I retire from public office, I'll be voting for a woman for president. ~ Barbara Mikulski

Running for and holding public office requires little more than making informed decisions based on the facts, your values, and getting to know your fellow citizens. You'll need the courage to be yourself, and a desire to do the right thing. Chances are you're doing that already. In ~ Marian Walsh

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

The United States Constitution is clear. It prohibits religious tests for public office. ~ Jeb Bush

Never did I trust Fortune, even when she seemed to be offering peace. All those blessings which she kindly bestowed on me – money, public office, influence – I relegated to a place from which she could take them back without disturbing me. Between them and me, I have kept a wide gap, and so she has merely taken them, not torn them from me. ~ Seneca

When I left office in 1979, I was about the only one who had really left public office on my own. ~ Olusegun Obasanjo

If it crosses your mind that water running through hundreds of miles of open ditch in a desert will evaporate and end up full of concentrated salts and muck, then let me just tell you, that kind of negative thinking will never get you elected to public office in the state of Arizona. When this giant new tap turned on, developers drew up plans to roll pink stucco subdivisions across the desert in all directions. The rest of us were supposed to rejoice as the new flow rushed into our pipes, even as the city warned us this water was kind of special. They said it was okay to drink but don't put it in an aquarium because it would kill the fish.
Drink it we did, then, filled our coffee makers too, and mixed our children's juice concentrate with fluid that would gag a guppy. Oh, America the Beautiful, where are our standards? ~ Barbara Kingsolver

Every special interest is entitled to justice full, fair and complete ... but not one is entitled to a vote in Congress, to a voice on the bench or to representation in any public office. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

People seemed to hold that the one sole end of the entire establishment of public office was to elect one man like Sheriff Hampton big enough or at least with sense and character enough to run the county and then fill the rest of the jobs with cousins and inlaws who had failed to make a living at everything else they ever tried. ~ William Faulkner

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

A situation in a public office is secure, but laborious and mechanical, and without the great springs of life, hope and fear. ~ William Hazlitt

Nominee. A modest gentleman shrinking from the distinction of private life and diligently seeking the honorable obscurity of public office. ~ Ambrose Bierce

I'll never get out of politics. I have friends in public office. I have things that I want to do. You can't go back in life. I won't go back to the existence I had before of running a political consulting firm and signing up clients and advising campaigns in exactly that way. ~ Karl Rove

Happy family: The existence and maintenance of [this] is thought to make a politician fit for public office. According to this theory, the public are less concerned by whether or not they are effectively represented than by the need to be assured that the penises and vaginas of public officials are only used in legally sanctioned circumstances. ~ John Ralston Saul

I was first elected to public office when the Reagan revolution was in full swing. Maximizing freedom guided the policies of that era, with tremendous success. ~ Jon Kyl

If I had my way, any man guilty of golf would be barred from any public office in the United States and the families of the breed would be shipped off to the white slave corrals of Argentina. ~ H.L. Mencken

I believe the American people are more concerned with a man's views and abilities than with the church to which he belongs. I believe the founding fathers meant it when they provided in Article VI of the Constitution that there should be no religious test for public office. And I believe that the American people mean to adhere to those principles today. ~ John F. Kennedy

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

The more women we elect to public office, the more wholesome the whole process will be, whether it's government, politics, whatever. ~ Nancy Pelosi

There are very few people who have had as much public impact as I've already had ... without being elected to public office in Massachusetts. ~ Chris Gabrieli

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

Pitt the Elder, had been prime minister a generation before (1766-68). He was a manic-depressive, had had a mental breakdown in 1751 while a Cabinet minister (Paymaster General) and had withdrawn from public office for three years. While serving in the highest office, clear signs of mental instability were evident. He spent most of his prime ministership sequestered away in a small room in his house at Hampstead, trying to avoid his ministers and the pressures of governing. During his time, his Chancellor was doing his own thing, unwisely levying the taxes on the North American colonies that would eventually ignite the War of Independence. ~ Phil Mason

The political objective of universal capitalism is maximum individual autonomy, the separation of political power wielded by the holders of public office from economic power held by citizens, and the broad diffusion of privately owned economic power. ~ Louis O. Kelso

Nothing so enchants attorneys general, their eyes generally fixed on higher public office, as slinging accusations against successful financial executives. Preening press conferences and fawning media coverage are virtually guaranteed, whether or not the charges have substance. ~ Kenneth Langone

It is a mindless philosophy that assumes that one's private beliefs have nothing to do with public office. Does it make sense to entrust those who are immoral in private with the power to determine the nation's moral issues and, indeed, its destiny? One of the most dangerous and terrifying trends in America today is the disregard for character as a central necessity in a leader's credentials. The duplicitous soul of a leader can only make a nation more sophisticated in evil. ~ Ravi Zacharias

I'm a small-town kid who grew up with a cornfield in the back yard and dreaming of serving my country in public office. ~ Mike Pence

A public office is not a job, it is an opportunity to do something for the public. ~ Franklin Knight Lane

Honesty is the great essential. It exalts the individual citizenship, and, without honesty, no man deserves the confidence of the people in private pursuit or in public office. ~ Warren G. Harding

I have been a lifelong community activist and frankly did not dream of being in public office. ~ Karen Bass

If you are prepared to run for public office, you also have to be willing to accept a debate about you. ~ Wolfgang Schauble

During my two terms serving the good people of New Hampshire's First District, I always worked for what I call the bottom 99% of Americans, and I never forgot that public office is a public trust. ~ Carol Shea-Porter

While I have served in public office for 30 years, my professional training is as a pharmacist, not a lawyer or an accountant. ~ George Ryan

What is inherently wrong with the word 'politician' if the fellow has devoted his life to holding public office and trying to do something for his people? ~ Richard J. Daley

It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office. ~ H.L. Mencken

Christine O'Donnell is making a mockery of running for public office. She has no real history, no real success in any kind of business. And what that sends to my generation is, one day, you can just wake up and run for Senate, no matter how [much] lack of experience you have. ~ Meghan McCain

I am really rich. All of my life I have heard a truly successful, and even a modestly successful person, cannot run for public office - just can't happen. Yet that's the kind of mindset you need to make this country great again. ~ Donald Trump

I don't want to see any religious people in public office because they're working for another boss. ~ Frank Zappa

You punish liars? In my world, we elect them to public office. ~ Bryan Davis

Rome became a republic in 509 B.C., after driving out its king and abolishing the monarchy. The next two centuries saw a long struggle for power between a group of noble families, patricians, and ordinary citizens, plebeians, who were excluded from public office. The outcome was a apparent victory for the people, but the old aristocracy, supplemented by rich pledeian nobles, still controlled the state. What looked in many ways like democracy was, in fact, an oligarcy modified by elections. ~ Anthony Everitt

Law of Suspects. Suspects are those: who have in any way aided tyranny (royal tyranny, Brissotin tyranny ... ); who cannot show that they have performed their civic duties; who do not starve, and yet have no visible means of support; who have been refused certificates of citizenship by their Sections; who have been removed from public office by the Convention or its representatives; who belong to an aristocratic family, and have not given proof of constant and extraordinary revolutionary fervor; or who have emigrated. ~ Hilary Mantel

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

As we look over the list of the early leaders of the republic, Washington, John Adams, Hamilton, and others, we discern that they were all men who insisted upon being themselves and who refused to truckle to the people. With each succeeding generation, the growing demand of the people that its elective officials shall not lead but merely register the popular will has steadily undermined the independence of those who derive their power from popular election. The persistent refusal of the Adamses to sacrifice the integrity of their own intellectual and moral standards and values for the sake of winning public office or popular favor is another of the measuring rods by which we may measure the divergence of American life from its starting point. ~ James Truslow Adams

I have brought peace to this land, and security," he began.
"And what of your soul, when you use the cleverness of argument to cloak such acts? Do you think that the peace of a thousand cancels out the unjust death of one single person? It may be desirable, it may win you praise from those who have happily survived you and prospered from your deeds, but you have committed ignoble acts, and have been too proud to own them. I have waited patiently here, hoping that you would come to me, for if you understood, then some of your acts would be mitigated. But instead you send me this manuscript, proud, magisterial, and demonstrating only that you have understood nothing at all."
"I returned to public life on your advice, madam," he said stiffly.
"Yes; I advised it. I said if learning must die it should do so with a friend by its bedside. Not an assassin. ~ Iain Pears

Surely anyone who has ever been elected to public office understands that one commodity above all others, namely the trust and confidence of the people, is fundamental in maintaining a free and open political system. ~ Hubert H. Humphrey

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

Most of the people who are in elective office in Washington, D.C., they have held public office before. How's that working for you? ~ Herman Cain

Public office is the last refuge of the scoundrel. ~ Boies Penrose

If I want to continue to build the kind of effort we have with Do Something, being in a public office would help. I wouldn't rule it out, but it's not something I feel determined to do. ~ Andrew Shue

But anyone who deliberately tries to get himself elected to a public office is permanently disqualified from holding one. ~ Thomas Moore

The main thing that every political campaign in the United States demonstrates is that the politicians of all parties, despite their superficial enmities, are really members of one great brotherhood. Their principal, and indeed their sole, object is to collar public office, with all the privileges and profits that go therewith. They achieve this collaring by buying votes with other people's money. ~ H.L. Mencken

This was the first time a woman in Dallas had won public office of any kind - even women questioned whether or not I was qualified, whether or not I could take it. ~ Eddie Bernice Johnson

We shouldn't leave the work of politics to people who run for public office. ~ Hillary Clinton

In general, any incoming administration must carefully examine ('vet') its nominees for high public office. ~ Richard V. Allen

Men should be disqualified for public office. Women should run the planet. They're better than us. ~ Ted Turner

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