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Public Office Quotes

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Public Office Quotes

“When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost... All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

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Author:H.L. Mencken
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“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.”

SoulPhilosophyValuesEvilPeaceLearningVirtuePrideKillingInjusticeProsperityCorruptionGoodDoctrinePublic OfficeVice
Book:The Dream of Scipio
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“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.”

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Book:Notes On Democracy
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“These international bankers and Rockefeller Standard Oil interests control the majority of newspapers and the columns of these papers to club into submission or drive out of public office officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government.”

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Author:Theodore Roosevelt
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“Although I held public office for a total of sixteen years, I also thought of myself as a citizen-politician, not a career one. Every now and then when I was in government, I would remind my associates that "When we start thinking of government as 'us' instead of 'them,' we've been here too long." By that I mean that elected officeholders need to retain a certain skepticism about the perfectibility of government.”

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Author:Ronald Reagan
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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.”

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Book:The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense
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“Does not all the world know that when in autumn the Bismarcks of the world, or they who are bigger than Bismarcks, meet at this or that delicious haunt of salubrity, the affairs of the world are then settled in little conclaves, with grater ease, rapidity, and certainty than in large parliaments or the dull chambers of public offices?”

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Book:The Palliser Novels: Complete Parliamentary Chronicles (All Six Novels in One Volume): Can You Forgive Her? + Phineas Finn + The Eustace Diamonds + Phineas Redux + The Prime Minister + The Duke’s Children
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“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.”

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Author:Sarah Palin
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“When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental - men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost... All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre.”

ThinkingMenDoeIdeasDoneWholeFactsFacesLostTermEmotionHe ManOfficeMarkChiefsCandidatesVotersDreadOddsPacksDominantIncapableMediocreBarkElementalsWeighingPublic OfficeComprehendingDevious
Author:H. L. Mencken
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“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.”

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Book:Minority Report
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“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.”

WisdomPoliticalPoliticsIndividualEconomyEconomicCitizensOfficeCapitalismUniversalSeparationObjectivesLiberalismBroadsAutonomyMaximumPolitical PowerPublic OfficeEconomic PowerDiffusionIndividual Autonomy
Book:Two-factor Theory: the Economics of Reality; how to Turn Eighty Million Workers Into Capitalists on Borrowed Money, and Other Proposals
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“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.”

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Author:John F. Kennedy
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“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.”

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Author:Elizabeth Edwards
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“Extremist groups like People for the American Way attack Christians who run for public office as a threat to the 'separation of church and state,' though they never specify why conservatives are any more of a threat than churchmen and church women on the Left who have led religiously inspired causes for decades.”

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Author:Ronald H. Nash
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“No one in this world, so far as I know--and I have searched 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 any one ever lost public office thereby. The mistake that is made always runs the other way. Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and even, in many cases, to read and write, it is assumed that they have ideas in their heads, and an appetite for more. This assumption is folly. They dislike ideas, for ideas make them uncomfortable.”

PeopleKnowsWorldWayWritingYearsMadeIdeasHelpingRunningAbleLostSpeakMistakeEducationCasesRecordsThis WorldOfficeMassAgentsUncomfortableAssumptionFollyHelp MeAppetiteDislikeUnderestimateEmployedPublic OfficeLost Money
Author:H. L. Mencken
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“I always felt, and I still feel, that the media doesn't belong in a public official's private life. It's a very difficult balance, because if you are elected to public office, people have a right to know a great deal about you, and the press has an absolute obligation to report all of that. But the reality is that there are times in which the reporting is really happening for almost voyeuristic reasons, in the gossip columns. Maybe half of it is wrong, and half of it is correct, and a lot of it is exaggerated. You've just got to get used to that if you're in public life.”

PeopleIfsKnowsFeelsStillsReasonRealityUsedFeltDifficultDealsHalfMediaBalanceOfficeHappeningsAbsolutesPressesObligationOfficialsReportsGossipPrivate LifeColumnsPublic LifeExaggeratedPublic OfficePublic Officials
Author:Rudy Giuliani
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“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.”

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Author:Joseph Nye
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“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.”

ShouldGovernmentWould BePoliticalPoliticsLossOfficeLaborBurdenIntenseDeclineVirtuousPublic OfficeForeseenTimes Like These
Book:Light and Liberty: Reflections on the Pursuit of Happiness
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“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.”

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Author:John Kasich
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“You have to decide what those issues are for you. What do you think disqualifies a person from holding public office? I believe that the endorsement of the right to kill unborn children disqualifies a person from any position of public office. It's simply the same as saying that the endorsement of racism, fraud, or bribery, would disqualify him - except that child-killing is more serious than those.”

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Book:A Godward Life: Savoring the Supremacy of God in All of Life
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“Chief among the forces affecting political folly is lust for power, named by Tacitus as "the most flagrant of all the passions." Because it can only be satisfied by power over others, government is its favorite field of exercise. Business offers a kind of power, but only to the very successful at the top, and without the dominion and titles and red carpets and motorcycle escorts of public office.”

KindGovernmentPoliticalPassionForceSuccessfulFieldsExerciseOffersOfficeRedLustSatisfiedChiefsTitlesFollyCarpetDominionMotorcycleRed CarpetPublic OfficeLust For PowerPower Over Others
Book:The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam
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