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Quotes by Public-servant
"We have disciplinary authority and will use it when appropriate."
30
"We've all learned about this disease since it was first discovered several years ago in Europe. And so I think we've learned from the European experience."
30
"Temporary teams of trusted people are generally sent to all Departments and to major agencies of government to assist in planning and to acquaint the incoming administration with the civil servants and bureaucracy that will remain in place in the new Administration."
30
"I don't believe, the president doesn't believe, that the high income tax cuts work, period. I don't think the evidence supports that."
30
"I have the most profound respect for the Department of Justice and the FTC. We in Europe are a younger and I would say junior institution to the historical antitrust experience of the US."
30
"No one knew what Rodney King had done beforehand to be stopped. No one realized that he was a parolee and that he was violating his parole. No one knew any of those things. All they saw was this grainy film and police officers hitting him over the head."
30
"I was an intelligence officer, not a policy-maker."
29
"There is no government in Europe where ministers go through that kind of confirmation process, which in fact is modeled on the way the U.S. cabinet members are confirmed."
29
"If a lobbyist sets up shop, or a lawyer, in which they're receiving income through what is something like a tax loophole so that it's not counting as corporate income, that is what this is counting as a small business."
29
"We put people of concern on the watch list or the no-fly list, so we have a number of layers of security beyond the airport checkpoint. We gather as much information about a passenger as the law allows without profiling."
29
"I think women are too valuable to be in combat."
29
"As an instrument for practical action, law is responsive to the wisdom of its time, which may be wrong, but it carries forward, sometimes in opposition to this wisdom or passion, a memory of received values."
28
"But what I want to assure and reassure the public is we are concerned about your safety, your security, and your privacy. Let's work together in partnership to ensure that we can have the best way forward."
28
"Watergate showed more strengths in our system than weaknesses... The whole country did take part in quite a genuine sense in passing judgment on Richard Nixon."
28
"Cutting taxes for very high income people an average of more than $100,000 a year for people that make more than a million dollars a year is not an effective way to get the economy going."
28
"Sanctions and negotiations can be very ineffective, and indeed foolish, unless the people you are talking with and negotiating with and trying to reach agreements with are people who can be trusted to keep their word."
28
"The greatest threat to the security of the people of North Korea comes from the government of North Korea."
28
"Like other antitrust agencies we make our assessment of a merger or antitrust case based on its impact on our jurisdiction, and not on the nationality of the companies. This is exactly what the U.S. antitrust agencies, the Justice Department and the FTC, do."
28
"I am amazed; until the day I die I shall wonder how Whittaker Chambers got into my house to use my typewriter."
28
"We were the finest. We were the best in the world. We were a department that people came from all over the world to study, to look at, to see how we accomplished so much with so little; and we did."
28
"Through the centuries, men of law have been persistently concerned with the resolution of disputes in ways that enable society to achieve its goals with a minimum of force and maximum of reason."
28
"Let's deal with reality. The reality is that we will be reading Miranda rights to the corpse of Osama bin Laden. He will never appear in an American courtroom."
28
"I am not a proponent of the death penalty, but I will enforce the law as this Congress gives it to us."
28
"We enter the government essentially in a hotel that is on fire. We're throwing people from the windows into the pool to save their lives and this is the evaluation of the Olympic diving committee: Well, the splash was too big."
27
"At least we're getting the kind of experience we need for the next war."
27
"Doubts raced through my mind as I considered the feasibility of enforcing a law which the majority of honest citizens didn't seem to want."
27
"It took the Gulf War to demonstrate that America did want more than one friend in the Mideast, and also was willing to take and make major risks to prevent a small Muslim country, Kuwait, from being overrun and in effect stolen by Iraq."
27
"The implication that everyone would have to accept its judgments uncritically, that it was a decision from which there could be no appeal, was astonishing."
27
"We operate under the law. Covert action authorities are communicated in a memorandum of notification."
26
"An expert is somebody who is more than 50 miles from home, has no responsibility for implementing the advice he gives, and shows slides."
26
"From Watergate we learned what generations before us have known; our Constitution works. And during Watergate years it was interpreted again so as to reaffirm that no one - absolutely no one - is above the law."
26
"Unavoidable circumstances prevent me from giving you ample written instructions. Such however as may be deemed necessary will be prepared and sent to you at the City of Washington in a very few days."
26
"In the future the way that Whittaker Chambers was able to carry out forgery by typewriter will be disclosed."
25
"As we move toward a new Middle East, over the years and, I think, over the decades to come, we will make a lot of people very nervous."
25
"Examples is more forcible than precept. People look at my six days in the week to see what I mean on the seventh."
25
"I told them that free people always had to decide where to draw the line between their liberty and their security. I noted that the attacks would almost certainly push us as a nation more toward security."
25
"It is only requisite, for me to say to you, that the President places great reliance upon your skill, judgment and intimate knowledge."
25
"The President had every reason to believe that the text presented to him was sound... These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president."
25
"Character... is a habit, the daily choice of right over wrong; it is a moral quality which grows to maturity in peace and is not suddenly developed on the outbreak of war."
24
"The people who work in intelligence work are more conscious, more apt to be attentive."
24
"If you had asked people in 1929, 'Here is what is about to happen. How much would you pay to avoid the Great Depression from occurring?' The answer is they would have paid a lot. They would have borrowed money if it could be used to prevent the Great Depression."
24
"The third lesson and tip actually comes from two of my favorite political philosophers: Mao Tse-tung and Mother Theresa - not often coupled with each other, but the two people I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point which is 'you're going to make choices; you're going to challenge; you're going to say why not; you're going to figure out how to do things that have never been done before."
23
"I appreciated and respected kids who asked questions. They didn't do it to get attention, but because they were interested. Kids who didn't want to look dumb seemed like scared little rabbits."
23
"The challenge is high. The stakes are important. I think it's manageable."
23
"For policy makers interested in using tax policy to stimulate investments or especially to smooth business cycle fluctuations, the results are not promising."
23
"Here rests the soul of our nation - here also should be our conscience."
23
"There are a lot of wonderful people in America who shouldn't be on the Supreme Court - and a lot who should be on the court who aren't such wonderful people."
22
"Al Qaeda is not the organization now that it was before. It is under stress organizationally. Its leadership spends more time trying to figure out how to keep from getting caught than they do trying to launch operations."
22
"Man's fate in battle is worked out before the war begins."
22
"The plan we developed to deal with al Qaeda depended on developing sources of human and technical intelligence that could give us insights into his plans at the tactical level. This is easy to say but hard to accomplish."
22
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