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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• 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 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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• 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

  Office, Needs, Maintenance

  John Ralston Saul (2012). “The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense”, p.156, Simon and Schuster

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• In order to get around the $500 cap, it's common knowledge that either potential candidates or public officials simply create these organizations, accumulate large sums of money which are then used in support of their campaign or to contribute to their campaign. They were trying to close that loophole.

  Bill Vaughan

  Order, Organization, Support

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• Elections are a good deal like marriages. There's no accounting for anyone's taste. Every time we see a bridegroom we wonder why she ever picked him, and it's the same with public officials.

  Will Rogers

  Marriage, America, Taste

  Will Rogers (1981). “Will Rogers' Weekly Articles: The Coolidge Years, 1925-1927”

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• This Civil Rights Act is a challenge to all of us to go to work in our communities and our states, in our homes and in our hearts, to eliminate the last vestiges of injustice in our beloved country. So tonight I urge every public official, every religious leader, every business and professional man, every working man, every housewife - I urge every American - to join in this effort to bring justice and hope to all our people, and to bring peace to our land.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  Inspiring, Country, Religious

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• A clear enunciation of these rights needs to be enshrined in the constitution to guarantee that this basic right of law-abiding gun owners and sportsmen shall not be infringed upon by anti-gun public officials.

  Charlton Heston

  Gun, Law, Rights

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• Campaign finance and ethics reform only works if it curtails all special interest groups equally and does not carve out any exceptions to benefit one party or another. 'Pay to play' reform was passed to limit the influence of big spending contractors over the public officials from whom they are trying to obtain work.

  Thomas Kean, Jr.

  Party, Play, Trying

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• For decades, the journalistic norm had been that the private lives of public officials remained private unless that life impinged on public performance.

  Roger Mudd

  Norm, Performances, Private Life

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• One of the most lethal mistakes a public official can make is raising taxes and not paying your own.

  Josh Mandel

  Mistake, Taxes, Raising Taxes

  "Outside cash keeps Mandel afloat" by David Catanese, www.politico.com. June 17, 2012.

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• We are going to see a great number of articles in the future from so-called experts and public officials. They will warn about more violence, more kidnappings, and more terrorists. Mass media, the armed forces, and intelligence agencies will saturate our lives with fascist scare tactics and 'predictions' that have already been planned to come true.

  Mae Brussell

  Agency, Media, Scare Tactics

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• Many people have written about the economic meaning of globalization; in One World Peter Singer explains its moral meaning. His position is carefully developed, his tone is moderate, but his conclusions are radical and profound. No political theorist or moral philosopher, no public official or political activist, can afford to ignore his arguments.

  Michael Walzer

  Profound, People, Political

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• A raised eyebrow, an inflection of the voice, a caustic remark dropped in the middle of a broadcast can raise doubts in a million minds about the veracity of a public official or the wisdom of a governmental policy.

  Spiro T. Agnew

  Eyebrows, Voice, Doubt

  "Spiro Agnew's Media Legacy: Trump, Obama and Time Magazine" by Jeffrey Lord, www.newsbusters.org. February 11, 2017.

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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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• The public official must pick his way nicely, must learn to placate though not to yield too much, to have the art of honeyed words but not to seem neutral, and above all to keep constantly audible, visible, likable, even kissable.

  Learned Hand

  Art, Yield, Too Much

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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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• It is true that when people are appointed to positions and talk without any appreciation or understanding of scientists, well, that gets scientists worried. And when public officials talk about alternative facts, people who have devoted their careers to trying to uncover facts are dismayed.

  Rush D. Holt, Jr.

  Appreciation, Careers, People

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• I believe that any intelligent person who reads the evidence will come to the same conclusion about 2004 election results . But one will never be able to prove it to an absolute certainty because the votes were never counted in Ohio as the result of an illegal effort by public officials to derail the recount. Even if you do not believe that the election was stolen, there is no dispute that the Republicans made a deliberate, concerted effort to tilt the results in their favor.

  Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

  Believe, Intelligent, Ohio

  Interview with David Kupfer, www.thirdworldtraveler.com. November 2006.

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