Public Life Quotes - Page 13

• The failure to invest in our public transportation and public life, I think, is a scandal and a shame, and it should be a national embarrassment.

  Mark Shields

  Thinking, Scandal, Shame

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• You'll have to learn that public life takes a lot of sweat; but it doesn't need to worry you. You won't always be right, but you mustn't suffer from being wrong. That's what kills people like us.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Confidence, Sweat, People

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• My father was a great innovator in public life, but when it came to raising his daughters, no one could have been more conservative.

  Rose Kennedy

  Daughter, Father, Conservative

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• Men of many words sometimes argue for the sake of talking; men of ready tongues frequently dispute for the sake of victory; men in public life often debate for the sake of opposing the ruling party, or from any other motive than the love of truth.

  George Crabbe

  Party, Men, Talking

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• the greater the bureaucratization of public life, the greater will be the attraction of violence. In a fully developed bureaucracy there is nobody left with whom one can argue, to whom one can represent grievances, on whom the pressures of power can be exerted. Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless we have a tyranny without a tyrant.

  Hannah Arendt

  Government, Tyrants, Political

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• We are riveted by the soap operas of public lives. We admire the famous most for what makes them infamous: it reassures us that they are not better and no happier than all the people with their noses pressed hard against the glass.

  Maureen Dowd

  Glasses, People, Noses

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• I truly believe that women of my generation can bring a new cleansing element to American public life.

  Georgie Anne Geyer

  Believe, Generations, Elements

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• the systematic abuse with which the newspapers of one side assail every candidate coming forward on the other, is the cause of many honorable men, who have a regard to their reputation, being deterred from entering public life; and of the people being thus deprived of some better servants than any they have.

  Harriet Martineau

  Men, Honorable Man, People

  Harriet Martineau (1837). “Society in America”, p.76

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• My intention was to write a chapter of the moral history of my country and I chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to me the centre of paralysis.

  James Joyce

  Country, Writing, Men

  "A brief survey of the short story part 32: James Joyce" by Chris Power, www.theguardian.com. March 9, 2011.

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• One point in my public life: I did all I could for the reform of the civil service, for the building up of the South, for a soundcurrency, etc., etc., but I never forgot my party.... I knew that all good measures would suffer if my Administration was followed by the defeat of my party. Result, a great victory in 1880. Executive and legislature both completely Republican.

  Rutherford B. Hayes

  Party, Building Up, Political

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• [The political mind] is a strange mixture of vanity and timidity, of an obsequious attitude at one time and a delusion of grandeurat another time. The political mind is the product of men in public life who have been twice spoiled. They have been spoiled with praise and they have been spoiled with abuse.

  Calvin Coolidge

  Attitude, Men, Vanity

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• Obama has already demonstrated an extraordinary ability to change the limits of what one can say publicly. His greatest achievement up to now is that, in his refined non-provocative way, he has introduced into public speech topics which had hitherto been de facto unsayable: the continuing importance of race in politics, the positive role of atheists in public life, the necessity to talk with "enemies" like Iran or Hamas, and so on. This is just what US politics needs today more than anything, if it is to break out of its gridlock: new words which will change the way we think and act.

  Slavoj Žižek

  Atheist, Thinking, Race

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• If I go out of public life with one feeling, with one conviction, it is this : a deep regret for many bitter words I have used in my life, deep sincere repentance for my violence of language. But I hope they will be forgiven me by God and man, because not once in all my life have I attacked anybody unjustly from my point of view, and without believing it was my duty to do so.

  Henri Bourassa

  Regret, Believe, Men

  "Fiery Politician, Dies, The Globe and Mail" by Henri Bourassa, p. A1, September 1, 1952.

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• The number of those who do selfless public service and those who serve without expecting any return, should increase. Their sterling qualities should show the way to the people at large. Their life would be a model to show how man should conduct himself in public life.

  Periyar E. V. Ramasamy

  Men, Numbers, People

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• Sistani’s office refuses the replacement of the law because it is not an Iraqi demand but it is a political demand to please some sides.

  Ali al-Sistani

  Party, Law, Office

  "Top Iraqi Shi'ite cleric rejects Baathist law". www.reuters.com. April 2, 2007.

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• I don't think there is anyone in public life today who can escape the inevitable onslaught of the media. It seeks to pry into and often grossly distort aspects of one's personal and professional life. I guess it just comes with the territory.

  Frederick Lenz

  Buddhism, Thinking, Media

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• In contemporary society secular humanism has been singled out by critics and proponents alike as a position sharply distinguishable from any religious formulation. Religious fundamentalists in the United States have waged a campaign against secular humanism, claiming that it is a rival "religion" and seeking to root it out from American public life. Secular humanism is avowedly non-religious. It is a eupraxsophy (good practical wisdom), which draws its basic principles and ethical values from science, ethics, and philosophy.

  Paul Kurtz

  Religious, Philosophy, Roots

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• So much of what passes for public life consists of little more than candidates without ideas, hiring consultants without conviction, to stage campaigns without content. The result, increasingly, is elections without voters.

  Gerald R. Ford

  Ideas, Campaigns, Littles

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• By the worldly standards of public life, all scholars in their work are of course oddly virtuous. They do not make wild claims, they do not cheat, they do not try to persuade at any cost, they appeal neither to prejudice nor to authority . . .

  Jacob Bronowski

  Trying, Prejudice, Cost

  Jacob Bronowski (1975). “Science and Human Values”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• Generally, it is human endeavour to have young people lead, and you see that in public life in the U.S. and everywhere.

  Salman Khurshid

  People, Young, Endeavour

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• I leave the governor's office next week, and with it public life[which] has been on the whole a pleasant one. But for ten years and over my salaries have not equalled my expenses, and there has been a feeling of responsibility, a lack of independence, and a necessary neglect of my family and personal interests and comfort, which make the prospect of a change comfortable to think of.

  Rutherford B. Hayes

  Responsibility, Thinking, Next Week

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