Political Responsibility Quotes

Politicians are a lot like diapers. They should be changed frequently and for the same reason.

When you become entitled to exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be impressed on your mind that God commands you to choose for rulers just men who will rule in the fear of God. The preservation of a republican government depends on the faithful discharge of this duty.

Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics, is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.

When statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties, they lead their country by a short route to chaos.

Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.

After meditation and prayer ... I conclude with melancholy that God lays upon me the revolting duty of voting for the numbskull, [Warren] Gamaliel [Harding], on the first Tuesday in November.

If something is being done on a secret basis in national security, that's a great reason for elected officials to not talk about it. And that's a great way to shirk accountability for it with the public.

We politicians are no great shakes, but you voters are no day at the beach.

History has tried hard to teach us that we can't have good government under politicians.

You can't adopt politics as a profession and remain honest.

I do have a very deep sense of regret that there was a conflict and that people lost their lives, and you know, many were responsible for that - and a lot of them wear pinstripe suits in London today.

To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman.

When you're a leader, you cannot ignore parts of your constituency, even if you know they're not going to vote for you.

The greatest threats to North Dakota are policies coming out of Washington, D.C. I see it every day and feel a sense of responsibility to do something about it.

Politics deserves much praise. Politics is a preoccupation of free men, and its existence is a test of freedom. The praise of free men is worth having, for it is the only praise which is free from either servility or condescension.

I believe in the critical importance of participating in the political system - from voting to standing for election. It's both rewarding and necessary that men and women of good will and clear thinking engage in honest, open debate.

He serves his party best who helps to make it instantly responsive to every need of the people.

But because I am a Catholic, and no Catholic has ever been elected president, the real issues in this campaign have been obscured - perhaps deliberately, in some quarters less responsible than this. So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again not what kind of church I believe in - for that should be important only to me - but what kind of America I believe in.

When I think about Trump and the GOP, the blood really is on their hands.

When you begin to speak for a nation as big as ours, it seems to me that any one individual is undertaking an extremely difficult piece of work.

Responsible politicians should never indulge in nostalgia - it is too much of a distraction at a time when a rapidly changing world throws up so many challenges, when we need to keep our wits about us.

There seems to be a sense in the British media that prime ministers enjoy going to war. They do not. The decision to send British soldiers into battle is the worst and most stomach-churning senior politicians have to take. It makes them wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat worrying if they have done the right thing.

Seriously, I do not think I am fit for the Presidency.

To want to become the President is, I think, such a bizarre ambition that it is automatically deranging.

I started off tagging stuff - I'm not meant to be having tea and biscuits with the prime minister.