Public Service Ethics Quotes

As a government employee, you can't testify against the government.

I think we have a Tea Party mandate, and that Tea Party mandate is for good-government type of things, things like term limits, things like a balanced budget amendment, things like read the bills for goodness sakes, things like that maybe Congress should only pass legislation that they apply to themselves as well.

What havoc, said I to myself, would these manners make in America! Our governors, our judges, our senators or representatives, and even our ministers, would be appointed by harlots, for money; and their judgments, decrees, and decisions, be sold to repay themselves, or, perhaps, to procure the smiles of profligate females.

Asking an incumbent member of Congress to vote for term limits is a bit like asking a chicken to vote for Colonel Sanders.

My rule, in which I have always found satisfaction, is, never to turn aside in public affairs through views of private interest; but to go straight forward in doing what appears to me right at the time, leaving the consequences with Providence.

My first warning is to my government officers to not presume citizens as thieves.

I consider a decent respect for Christianity among the best recommendations for public service.

A politician must have some scruples, a certain decency; he cannot smear himself in the mud for the sake of a high ideal.

Civil servants and government functionaries do not write memoirs because they hope to get more government jobs or assignments.