Official Duties Quotes

My mom is a bureaucrat officer.

The great scientist was offered the Presidency of the young state of Israel:] I am deeply moved ..., though also sad and abashed that it is impossible for me to accept this offer. Since all my life I have been dealing with the world of objects. I have neither the natural ability nor the experience necessary to deal with human beings and to carry out official functions.

I'm always running back and forth to the district.

Thou knowest how long and loyally I served the king in his worldly affairs. For that cause, it pleased him to promote me to the office which now I hold. When I consented, it was for the sake of the king alone. When I was elected, I was formally acquitted of my responsibilities for all that I had done as a chancellor.

Not but that crimes of a strictly legal character fall within the scope of the power…; but that it has a more enlarged operation, and reaches what are aptly termed political offences, growing out of personal misconduct or gross neglect, or usurpation, or habitual disregard of the public interests, in the discharge of the duties of political office

I was an intelligence officer, not a policy-maker.

You are now public property, and ought to be where you can be reached by the people until you are inaugurated.

The president cannot escape from his office.

If we [are] to fully discharge the serious responsibilities imposed upon us, the confidential character of our files must be inviolate.

All my life I have dealt with objective matters; hence I lack both the natural aptitude and the experience to deal properly with people and to carry out official functions.

I would like to think that I have followed in the proper tradition of attorneys-general, providing good quality advice to my colleagues in government and have taken on their needs and concerns.

One of the nice things about no longer being Secretary of State is that I can actually answer your questions.

Whether elected or appointed, public officials serve those who put and keep them in office. We cannot depend upon them to fight our battles.

Sir, I see a lot of documents in my day-to-day business, and I can't tell you every document that I've seen. It may have passed across my desk. It may not have passed across my desk. I truthfully cannot answer that question, other than to say I don't remember.

What is interesting in Washington, D.C., is I've never missed a vote. The veterans' committee keeps track of hearings, and I've never missed a hearing or a vote on the VA committee.

You serve the country, and you help the President. If the President wants you to leave, you know, you are two corridors down.

All I can tell you is when the governor calls, I answer his phone.

If I'm just at the White House, I have meetings in my office, I sign letters, I plan different things. Late in the afternoon, I'll quit working and wait for my husband to get home.

I was circulating around briefing these guys. Starting with Mitchell, and Haldeman, and [domestic policy adviser] John Ehrlichman, and all the guys. Just sort of circulating around with a briefcase. I cobbled together a briefing of a sort that would do the trick. And introduced them to technical systems of one kind or another.

The only problem with running for office is, once you are elected you have to serve.

It is a rather curious thing to have to divide one's life into personal and official compartments and temporarily put the personal side into its hidden compartment to be taken out again when one's official duties are at an end.

Secretary Perry, Ambassador Volker and I worked with Mr. Rudy Giuliani on Ukraine matters at the express direction of the President of the United States. We did not want to work with Mr. Giuliani. Simply put, we played the hand we were dealt.

We have to give value to authority. We have to give value to office, being in office, holding office.

That reminds me to remark, in passing, that the very first official thing I did, in my administration-and it was on the first day of it, too-was to start a patent office; for I knew that a country without a patent office and good patent laws was just a crab, and couldn't travel any way but sideways or backways.

The job of elected officials is to answer to the people who sent them to Washington - not to scorn them, not to demean them, not to mock them, and not to sell their jobs and dreams to the highest bidder.