OFFICE

Related Subjects: Election, Government, Place, Politics, Rank

1. Public life is a situation of power and energy; he trespasses against his duty who sleeps upon his watch, as well as he that goes over to the enemy.—BURKE, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontent
   

2. It ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion high respect, their business unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfaction, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interests to his own.—BURKE, Speech to the Electors of Bristol
   

3. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.—BURKE,
   Speech to the Electors of Bristol
   

4. Governing persons, were they never so insignificant intrinsically, have for most part plenty of memoir-writers.—CARLYLE, The French Revolution
   

5. Public officers are the servants and agents of the people, to execute the laws which the people have made.—GROVER CLEVELAND
   

6. A man ain't got no right to be a public man, unless he meets the public views.—DICKENS, Martin Chuzzlewit
   

7. I shall never ask, never refuse, nor ever resign an office.—FRANKLIN, Autobiography
   

8. Never with my consent shall an officer of the people, compensated for his services out of their pockets, become the pliant instrument of the Executive will.—WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON, Inaugural Address
   

9. It is not fit the public trusts should be lodged in the hands of any, till they are first proved and found fit for the business they are to be entrusted with.—MATTHEW HENRY, Commentaries
   

10. When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as a public property.—JEFFERSON
    

11. Trust me, Today's Most Indispensables,
    Five hundred men can take your place or mine.—KIPLING, The Last Department
    

12. No important institution, moreover, is ever merely what the law makes it. It accumulates about itself traditions, conventions, ways of behavior, which, without ever attaining the status of formal law, are not less formidable in their influence than law itself could require.—HAROLD J. LASKI, The American Presidency
    

13. Every time I fill a vacant office, I make ten malcontents and one ingrate.—Louis XIV
    

14. To be turned from one's course by men's opinions, by blame, and by misrepresentation, shows a man unfit to hold an office.—PLUTARCH, Lives
    

15. He that puts on a public gown must put off a private person.—Proverb
    

16. We must remember not to judge any public servant by any one act, and especially should we beware of attacking the men who are merely the occasions and not the causes of disaster.—THEODORE ROOSEVELT
    

17. They who are in highest places, and have the most power, have the least liberty, because they are most observed.—JOHN TILLOTSON, Reflections