Public Transparency Quotes

It's been vindicating to see the reaction from lawmakers, judges, public bodies around the world, civil liberties activists who have said it's true that we have a right to at least know the broad outlines of what our government's doing in our name and what it's doing against us.

As an elected official, I live a very public life. That elected figures live under something of a microscope is perhaps a necessary condition for an informed public, and yet, even as a public official, I maintain very personal documents that are not intended for public view.

The federal government should not be able to hide behind sovereign immunity when the facts don't meet the protections.

I also feel that I have been very honest with my friends, my family and also with the public about the mistakes that I've made and the challenges that I've gone through.

Anyone who studies declassified documents soon becomes aware that government secrecy is largely an effort to protect policy makers from scrutiny by citizens, not to protect the country from enemies.

We have said the first step was to designate the land, inform the owners. And the second would be to get the responses from the owners. And this will be openly done.

The newspapers, magazines and other journals of the country, it is safe to say, have shed and continue to shed, more light on the public and business affairs of, the nation than any other instrumentality of public; and since informed public opinion is the most potent of all restraints upon misgovernment, the suppression or abridgment of the publicity afforded by a free press cannot be regarded otherwise than with grave concern.

The Federal Reserve, like other central banks, wields powerful tools; democratic accountability requires that the public be able to see how and for what purposes those tools are being used.

Governments and local administrative bodies decide to inform the public of their mistakes only when losses have become disproportionately great.

I don’t see any problem with having proceedings televised. I think it would be good for the public.

Before any family is placed in any type of shelter, there must be a thorough, top-to-bottom, building-wide inspection. These inspections must be ongoing and publicly accessible. There is no excuse for any person to be blindly put into an apartment without a guarantee that the space is safe.

In boxing, as with other government-regulated activity, the integrity of public records should be preserved.

Once Google is selected to run the infrastructure on which we are changing the world, Google will be there for ever. Democratic accountability will not be prevalent. You cannot file a public information request about Google.

Long before the technology revolution there was declassification of documents and I've spent quite a lot of time studying declassified internal documents and written a lot about them. In fact, anybody who's worked through the declassified record can see very clearly that the reason for classification is very rarely to protect the state or the society from enemies. Most of the time it is to protect the state from its citizens, so they don't know what the government is doing.

He was one of the few political leaders I have ever met whose public speeches revealed more than his private conversations. [On Ronald Reagan]

It's my father's legacy. My father's view was that the public is the employer of these government employees and has the right to know what they're up to.

My subcommittee will be thoroughly investigating this issue and demanding answers from Census officials on allegations that the Census Bureau is changing the wording of survey questions used to determine our nation's annual report on health insurance coverage.

The reason I have LGBT fans is because I'm an open book; they're attracted to that.

I talk to the press five days a week … The president—how often does he talk to the press? His press secretary talks to the press every day, okay. But I happen to think the public should demand he should. I think he should; I think that’s his job.

I have always been very open and honest about this part of my life with my friends, my family, and my colleagues. In a perfect world, I don't think it's anyone else's business, but I do think there is value in standing up and being counted. I’m not an activist, but I am a human being and I don't give that up by being a journalist.

I'm not somebody who runs from the press. I'm not coy. I appreciate the press I've had over the years.

The corruption that hides in plain sight is the real threat to our democracy.

The American public got to see for themselves every day, all day, how this trial progressed. There's a lot of value in the public being able to see how the system works.

I've been very transparent with reporters, but they only want to print mean stuff.

I challenge the Government to come clean on the cost of Brexit. The reason they can't look us in the eye, it's because they know this will leave us worse off and with less control. It's a gross abuse of civil service impartiality.