Bashir Assad Quotes

The government is just us.

Everyone living under the social contract we call democracy has a duty to act responsibly, to obey the laws, and to abandon certain types of self-interested behaviors that conflict with the general good.

Liberty was realized when the citizens were ... willing to sacrifice their private interests for the sake of the community

I have always been very open about my respect for public service.

I am drawn to public service.

For all the huffing and blowing we get about rugged individualism, the American spirit and the American experiment always have had at their heart the notion that the government is all of us and that, therefore, the government may keep things in trust for all of us.

I have a lifelong devotion to public service.

What drives people to public service is a sense of possibility. If you haven't sensed that possibility you don't get started in the same way, you don't feel you can have an impact.

I'm a people's man - only the people matter.

If one of my boys was asking me if they should go into politics, I'd say there's only one reason to go into public life and that's to help people.

Let each person do his or her part. If one citizen is unwilling to participate, all of us are going to suffer. For the American idea, though it is shared by all of us, is realized in each one of us.

Public trust is essential to public safety.

The value of government to the people it serves is in direct relationship to the interest citizens themselves display in the affairs of state.

I think my mom and dad knew from the very beginning that I was destined to go into public service.

It's the most rewarding thing to be a civil servant.

Every society, all government, and every kind of civil compact therefore, is or ought to be, calculated for the general good and safety of the community.

I think there's no higher calling in terms of a career than public service, which is a chance to make a difference in people's lives and improve the world.

I mean those people who are interested in good government will certainly contribute in order to make certain there's some counter-balance to those whose interests in good government is less.

Wherefore for the public interest and benefit of human society it is requisite that the highest obligations possible should be laid upon the consciences of men.

What it missing, I think, is this notion of the common good.

Look around, and you see everywhere the exertions and acts of individuals restricted, regulated, or promoted, on the principle of the common welfare.

I think politics is important. It's how we run our society. I think it should be natural to have an interest in the subject, and I almost don't understand why some people don't.

The government serves the people - not vice-versa.

When a citizen gives his suffrage to a man of known immorality he abuses his trust; he sacrifices not only his own interest, but that of his neighbor; he betrays the interest of his country.

I don't think politics has anything to do with left, right, or center. It has to do with trying to do right by people.