Louis Antoine de Saint-Just Quotes

We must remember that politics is more than a power game. The core of politics in my view is to serve our citizens, to serve our fellow human beings.

Public service used to be the highest of callings, until people like Madame Voldemort vilified it.

Politics isn't just a game of clashing parties and competing interests. The right reason is to challenge the status quo, to serve the common good, and to leave this nation better than we found it.

My public life is before you; and I know you will believe me when I say, that when I sit down in solitude to the labours of my profession, the only questions I ask myself are, What is right? What is just? What is for the public good?

Public officers are the trustees of the people.

If you accept the privilege of public service, you had better understand the responsibilities of public service.

Concern for individual well-being is for private citizens .... Princes, who enjoy public possessions, should be concerned with public good.

The leader is supposed to represent the community, the public good. He's supposed to be the focal point and the guide and the inspiration, and to represent a concern for the public good. The trouble is, the tragic problem is, very often, when you are a leader and pursue the public good, it may be at the expense of your private interests in a very drastic way

Men in their private capacities may be allowed to prefer their single profit, but should consult only the general good in public councils.

Sometime between elections we should concentrate on doing something.

For me, public service is an honor, and I have the ultimate respect for the rule of law.

Let's just do what is right for the American people. And those of us who are involved in politics and government know that our responsibility is to the American people, that we have a responsibility to find our common ground, to seek it and to find it.

I am a patriot. I would think there are no politicians who are not patriots. Since I am a politician, I often get criticized as I try to exercise what I believe to be right. However, if you mind such criticism, I think you can't protect people's lives.

It's a rarity when someone takes a political risk in Washington today in the public interest.

The final end of government is not to exert restraint but to do good.

The administration of government, like a guardianship ought to be directed to the good of those who confer, not to those who receive the trust.

If they think its such a sacrifice to go into public service, then they should stay the heck out.

In all your acts, self interest shall be cast away. Look and listen for the welfare of the whole people, and have always in view not only the present, but of the coming generations.

All government is intended for the benefit of the people.

I have seen in the Halls of Congress more idealism, more humaneness, more compassion, more profiles of courage than in any other institution that I have ever known.

Law principally and properly seeks the common good. Planning for the common good is the task of the whole people or of someone ruling in the person of the whole people. Thus lawmaking is the task of the whole charge of the whole people; for in all other matters direction toward an end is the function of him to whom the end belongs.

A minister of state is excusable for the harm he does when the helm of government has forced his hand in a storm; but in the calm he is guilty of all the good he does not do.

Every kind of service necessary to the public good becomes honorable by becoming necessary.

There is a snail-paced gait for the advance of new ideas on the general mind under which we must acquiesce. A forty years' experience of popular assemblies has taught me that you must give them time for every step you take. If too hard pushed, they balk, and the machine retrogrades.

The instinct to command others, in its primitive essence, is a carnivorous, altogether bestial and savage instinct. Under the influence of the mental development of man, it takes on a somewhat more ideal form and becomes somewhat ennobled, presenting itself as the instrument of reason and the devoted servant of that abstraction, or political fiction, which is called the public good