Tom Lehrer Quotes

It is very unfair to expect a politician to live in private up to the statements he makes in public.

When tempted to do any thing in secret, ask yourself if you would do it in public.

As long as I tell the truth I feel that nobody can touch me.

The measure of your quality as a public person, as a citizen, is the gap between what you do and what you say.

Obama has already rejected the bright sunlight of public knowledge, which is democracy's great disinfectant and cure.

My life has been an open book, for better or for worse.

If it stands the test of public scrutiny, do it... if it doesn't stand the test of public scrutiny then don't do it.

I always wanted to be honest with myself and to those who have had faith in me.

Being truthful is a necessity because when I'm not being truthful it takes a toll on me. I don't have any room for it in my life. I don't have an across-the-board opinion on honesty in relationships. But for me, personally, it's paramount.

Credibility is someone else's idea of what I should be doing.

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

Public agencies should be criticized.

No public character has ever stood the revelation of private utterance and correspondence.

Can the public business be thus transacted and in secret?

A mistake that is kept secret only harms the person who has committed it, but if it becomes public and is not denounced, it harms the community

Misrepresentation of public Measures is easily overthrown, by representing public Measures truly; when they are honest, they ought to be publicly known, that they may be publicly commended, but if they are knavish or pernicious, they ought to be publicly exposed, in order to be publicly detested.

I have long observed one Rule .... It is simply this, to be concern'd in no Affairs that I should blush to have made publick, and to do nothing but what spies may see ...

For all the criticism of me, there's one thing you won't hear anybody say, and that's that I've pulled the wool over anyone's eyes.

I stand behind all my tweets. If I tweeted it and I said it, I am not apologizing for it.

You wouldn't run for the United States Senate or for governor or for anything else without answering people's questions about what you believe. And I think the Supreme Court is no different.

If the air quality is terrible in Los Angeles, if a particular university is unusually expensive, if crime is on the rise in Dallas, or if a company has a lot of recalled toys, transparency can spur change. Whenever public or private institutions have to answer to the public, their performance is likely to improve.

As a public official, when I take a position, I stand up to explain and defend it. I file annual financial disclosures, campaign finance reports, and have to face the scrutiny of public opinion.

A candidate is not going to suddenly change once they get into office. Just the opposite, in fact. Because the minute that individual takes that oath, they are under the hottest, harshest light there is. And there is no way to hide who they really are.

The most important thing to me is facing people head on and focusing on not disappointing the public.

As long as I'm speaking the truth, I'm going to be OK with what I'm saying. That's kind of how I've lived my whole life.