Benjamin Wittes Quotes

I was concerned about who he would put in there as FBI director because he had expressed antipathy for the FBI, for the director. I was going to stay there and make sure that he couldn't replace me.

I would never think of crying about any loss of an office, because that's always a possibility, and if you're professional, then you deal with it professionally.

By every measure, John Kennedy's sex life was compulsive and reckless. At one level, it had clear public consequences. Knowledge of Kennedy's behavior gave FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover absolute job security, as well as the potential power to derail Kennedy's re-election had he survived assassination.

For me, Company is still the best way for me to work.

In a lot of work places, you work at a lot of jobs and people work more with their colleagues than with their family.

I am going to use this secretary for as long as I need her. Now you go back and tell that to your superiors, and don’t come back.

I have been told for years by among others, some of my own family, that this is exactly what the Bureau was doing all the time, and in my great wisdom and high office, I assured them that ... it just wasn't true. It couldn't happen. They wouldn't do it .... The trick now ... is for this Committee to be able to figure out how to persuade the people of this country that indeed it did go on. And how shall we insure that is will never happen again?

I certainly don't need a job. Getting re-elected is not on my Top 10 list.

Some days in the office are easier than others.

My ambition is to sit behind a desk and work.

At the end of the day, when you are in the front office, your tenure is dictated by the people surrounding you.

In the highest government office, you have to be ready to bow out at any time, otherwise you are not a free individual anymore.

You've never had a job that you thought was secure. You don't think the Tonight Show is risk free. Especially when you saw what happened with your buddy Conan O'Brien. There is always a Plan B.I am ready to apply to the post office.

What's funny about that office is it's entirely dependent on how close you are to the president, because the president decides what your role will be. If you get on with the president, that's great; if you fall out with the president, power can go away.

Sometimes the FBI is assigned to do background checks on people who are coming into government in the executive office of the president. Other times, not. A lot of times there are people who are arriving with clearances that already exist.

The Founders of the U.S. gave the senators a term of office three times longer than that of a representative precisely to encourage a reflective frame of mind, a distance from the passions of the voters, and a capacity for deliberative consideration.

The first ladyship is the only federal office in which the holder can neither be fired nor impeached.

I will not step down, I will not resign, ... I will work to the end of my term in office under the constitution. In the year 2000, there will be presidential elections under the constitution and I will not run in those elections.

I've got three friends that you'd call famous, but I'm sure after 20 years, most of my friends will be famous or work in television, because that's the nature of what your work is. When I was working in an office, most of my friends worked in offices.

Barack Obama took over after Vladimir Putin's first aggression, in Georgia. In 2009, he did the reset policy because they had these stupid ideas about former president Dmitry Medvedev. They thought he would be the leader, not Putin. Everyone played this game with Medvedev as their bet, Berlin, Paris, London, the idea of smoothly transferring to something more acceptable. It was always a charade, a Putin project to solidify his power and come back after four years of nominal occupation of the office by Medvedev.

We have made progress from where we were when President Obama took office, when the economy - our economy had just contracted almost by nine percent.

I always thought it was important to overdeliver, and when I got one of my first jobs, writing jokes for Garry Shandling when he was hosting the Grammys, I stayed up all night and wrote a hundred jokes, and I thought, "I'm always going to be the person that gives them more than they requested, and that's why they'll want to keep me around."

The Open Market Committee, as presently established, is plainly not in the public interest. This committee must be operated by purely public servants, representatives of the people as a whole and not any single interest group. The Open Market Committee should be abolished, and its powers transferred to the Federal Reserve Board - the present public members of the committee, with reasonably short terms of office.

I could have an office all to myself but since my collaborators don’t have one, then I too am contented to have a desk in a shared room.

The laws are, and ought to be, relative to the constitution, and not the constitution to the laws. A constitution is the organization of offices in a state, and determines what is to be the governing body, and what is the end of each community. But laws are not to be confounded with the principles of the constitution; they are the rules according to which the magistrates should administer the state, and proceed against offenders.