Civil Service Quotes

Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government job.

The main thing is the ‘rule of corruption’: helping the horse both to race and also to get a mouthful of hay. It’s what all civil servants are secretly thinking. Our expectations for our civil servants are far too high, far too grandiose. The pressure is more than their flesh-and-blood bodies can stand.

I think politics are a part of life, so I have no resistance to it, but it's not something I set out to do.

I'm still working for the government.

The government is a machinery manned by human beings.

My mom is a bureaucrat officer.

When the business interests... pushed through the first installment of civil service reform in 1883, they expected that they would be able to control both political parties equally.

Some civil servants are neither servants nor civil.

I'm a politician. Politics is just a convenience for our life and we just have to create a beautiful world together that would be very convenient for us and just enjoyable.

I have a proven record, a record of accomplishment, a record of cutting taxes, of shrinking the government, of reforming education, of challenging the status quo, eliminating career civil service protections, shrinking the government workforce by 11 percent, but leading the nation in job growth.

I long for the time when the public service will get onto a higher plane than that of serving political parties, and come to serve the public interest instead.

When I first became a civil servant, I had to fill out a form. The form did not ask whether or not I was a citizen of America but I had to certify that I was a Democrat.

Bureaucrats behave very differently than a private-sector manager because their motivations are different. Permanent bureaucrats, no matter how senior, worry about their next job.

Having served in the Nixon Administration, I am well aware of how the political leadership of an administration can try to politicize the civil service, including law enforcement.

I went to work for the Civil Service. I'd wanted to work for the Ministry of Defence because I had some far-fetched idea that it had something to do with the Avengers, but I ended up in Social Security.

The civil service are risk averse.

Who wants good people in government? Good people should be in the private sector. Helping us out, helping themselves out in the private sector. We want schmoes in government. We want people who can't find the doorknob. Why waste productive people, as well as looting the taxpayer?

Government is the agent of those who are too refined to do their own mugging.

The British civil service ... is a beautifully designed and effective braking mechanism.

The civil servants will always be there to look after this country. So don't worry... Any political party taking power will have to work with the civil servants who are very well acquainted with running this country.

I had a 20-year, stellar government career.

The American government is a rule of the people, by the people, for the bosses.

Keeping the people's government open is not a concession to me. Keeping vital service running and hundreds of thousands of Americans on the job is not something you 'give' to the other side.

I served 40 years in government, and I'm not looking forward to a position or an assignment. Of course, I have always said if a president asks you to do something, you have to consider it. But I am in no way interested in returning to government. But I, of course, would sit and talk to any president who wishes to talk to me.

In a country where offices are created solely for the benefit of the people no one man has any more intrinsic right to official station than another. Offices were not established to give support to particular men at the public expense. No individual wrong is, therefore, done by removal, since neither appointment to nor continuance in office is a matter of right.