Government Officials Quotes

My view was that government officials could not sit on the board of the central bank, and I am very happy that has been upheld.

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.

The main targets of attack by the peasants are the local tyrants, the evil gentry and the lawless landlords, but in passing they also hit out against patriarchal ideas and institutions, against the corrupt officials in the cities and against bad practices and customs in the rural areas. In force and momentum the attack is tempestuous; those who bow before it survive and those who resist perish. As a result, the privileges which the feudal landlords enjoyed for thousands of years are being shattered to pieces. Every bit of the dignity and prestige built up by the landlords is being swept into the dust.

Ministers [government officials] in the conduct of war … assume that war having been declared, the sole duty and anxiety of Ministers should consist in supporting generals and armies in the field.

In Mafia states government officials enrich themselves and their families and friends while exploiting the money, muscle, political influence, and global connections of criminal syndicates to cement and expand their own power…Top positions in some of the world’s most profitable illicit enterprises are no longer filled only by professional criminals; they now include senior government officials, legislators, spy chiefs, heads of police departments, military officers, and, in some extreme cases, even heads of state and their families.

There are two classes of women in Soviet Russia. There is the professional class, which has taken the place of the nobility and includes government officials, artists, doctors, composers and writers as well as former members of the old nobility whose sympathy is with the Soviets, and also the peasant class.

China is a country ruled by men more than laws.

Governmental officials -- including those whose principal duty is to enforce the law --have violated or ignored the law over long periods of time and have advocated and defended their right to break the law. The Constitutional system of checks and balances has not adequately controlled intelligence activities

Anybody who covers Washington and Wall Street knows that there is an awesome amount of self-dealing, most of it perfectly legal.

Donald Trump has made outstanding picks for his Cabinet.

I make a living off (politicians), so I can't knock 'em. Every time we elect some fellow we think he's terrible and then when we get another one in he's worse. So, I am always in favor of keeping the one we've got and let the other go.

Let princes choose ministers … rather upon conscience than upon bravery.

Decency, security and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously.

This role is designed to question the behavior of government officials on behalf of the public. I think people who have done this and all jobs in journalism have believed that.

Think well of yourself and others will too. Unless those others are in government, banking, or show business.

Foreign Ministry guys don't become agents. Party officials, the Foreign Ministry nerds, tend not to volunteer to Western intelligence agencies.

Show me that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people were placed on the sole chance of their rulers being good men without a consequent loss of liberty! I say that the loss of that dearest privilege has ever followed, with absolute certainty, every such mad attempt. Shall Liberty or Empire be Sought?

State Department perverts ... bright young men who were born with silver spoons in their mouths ... selling the Nation out.

I know some say, let us have good laws, and no matter for the men that execute them: but let them consider, that though good laws do well, good men do better: for good laws may want good men, and be abolished or evaded by ill mend but good men will never want good laws, nor suffer ill ones.

If you must kill English officials, why not kill me instead?

In general, any incoming administration must carefully examine ('vet') its nominees for high public office.

The seemingly omnipresent storm clouds hanging over the Constitution often make it hard to find a silver lining. Every day, the front page of The Drudge Report is littered with stories of government assaults on our civil liberties - from local government officials all the way up to the Oval Office.

[Describing Prohibition:] Politicians are ducking, candidates are hedging, the Anti-Saloon League is prospering, people are being poisoned, bootleggers are being enriched, and Government officials are being corrupted.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, never being in business, never really negotiating, give away for nothing things they shouldn't give away.

The Bush Cabinet is quite interesting, there are no flashy people in there. No stars. They all seem quite focused and serious and knowledgeable about the areas to which they have been appointed.