Tom Coburn Quotes

In 'Profiles in Courage,' my grandfather, John F. Kennedy, praised leadership that put country above party, elevated principles over petty politics and promoted progress before personal interests.

It isn't polls or public opinion at the moment that counts. It is right and wrong and leadership--men with fortitude, honesty, and a belief in the right that makes epochs in the history of the world.

Barry Goldwater once said, "I'd rather be right than president." I can't tell you how much I disagree with that Barry Goldwater.

If you ask me to compromise on principle, I will get out the veto pen.

Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.

A statesman cannot afford to be a moralist.

It is as hard and severe a thing to be a true politician as to be truly moral.

Men say that I am a saint losing myself in politics. The fact is that I am a politician trying my hardest to be a saint.

To those of you with your years of service still ahead, the challenge is yours. Stop doubting yourselves. Have the courage to make up your minds and hold your decisions. Refuse to be BOUGHT for a nickel, or a million dollars, or a job!

The public wants elected officials who have character. The public wants elected officials who are willing to stand up and say things, even if they don't agree with them.

When a man has his heart in the right place and good taste, he can not only do well in politics but is even predetermined for it. If someone is modest and does not yearn for power, he is certainly not ill-equipped to engage in politics; on the contrary, he belongs there. What is needed in politics is not the ability to lie but rather the sensibility to know when, where, how and to whom to say things.

When we lack integrity, we use power to control. When we lead with integrity, we use power to bless.

A leader is useless when he acts against the promptings of his own conscience.

To say America can have strong leadership without strong character is to say we can get water without the wet.

No man has come so near our definition of a constitutional statesman - the powers of a first-rate man and the creed of a second-rate man.

In a president, character is everything. A president doesn't have to be brilliant... He doesn't have to be clever; you can hire clever... You can hire pragmatic, and you can buy and bring in policy wonks. But you cant buy courage and decency, you cant rent a strong moral sense. A president must bring those things with him. He needs to have, in that much maligned word, but a good one nonetheless, a vision of the future he wishes to create.. But a vision is worth little if a president doesn't have the character - the courage and heart - to see it through.

In a free government the demand for moral qualities should be made superior to that of talents.

We want deeper sincerity of motive, a greater courage in speech and earnestness in action.

There are actually very few US politicians who have integrity and vision.

It is not easy to stand up against your constituents or your friends or colleagues or your community and take a tough stand for something you believe is right. Because you always want to keep working and live to fight another battle and it might cost you your career.

Good men who exercise power are really the most fascinating of all people.

Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.

Leadership is about doing what you know is right - even when a growing din of voices around you is trying to convince you to accept what you know to be wrong.

Divorced from ethics, leadership is reduced to management and politics to mere technique.

There is no man more dangerous, in a position of power, than he who refuses to accept as a working truth the idea that all a man does should make for rightness and soundness, that even the fixing of a tariff rate must be moral.