I am not a perfect servant. I am a public servant doing my best against the odds. As I develop and serve, be patient. God is not finished with me yet.
Jesse Jackson

I was never interested in being an overly public person.
John Cusack

But it must not be thought that I say this out of personal experience: for in the many years that I have been before the public my secret methods have been steadily shielded by the strict integrity of my assistants, most of whom have been with me for years.
Harry Houdini

How the early priests came into possession of these secrets does not appear, and if there were ever any records of this kind the Church would hardly allow them to become public.
Harry Houdini

Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to drink other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits.
Walter Bagehot

Every ballet, whether or not successful artistically or with the public, has given me something important.
Mikhail Baryshnikov

We're first on executions. We're 49th in funding public education. We're in a race with Mississippi for the bottom, and we're winning.
Kinky Friedman

My conviction of the necessity of further legislative provisions for the safe-keeping and disbursement of the public moneys and my opinion in regard to the measures best adapted to the accomplishment of those objects have been already submitted to you.
Martin Van Buren

It seems proper, at all events, that by an early enactment similar to that of other countries the application of public money by an officer of Government to private uses should be made a felony and visited with severe and ignominious punishment.
Martin Van Buren

There is a power in public opinion in this country - and I thank God for it: for it is the most honest and best of all powers - which will not tolerate an incompetent or unworthy man to hold in his weak or wicked hands the lives and fortunes of his fellow-citizens.
Martin Van Buren

The national will is the supreme law of the Republic, and on all subjects within the limits of his constitutional powers should be faithfully obeyed by the public servant.
Martin Van Buren

That we are to stand by the President right or wrong is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.
Charlie Sheen

Equality is the public recognition, effectively expressed in institutions and manners, of the principle that an equal degree of attention is due to the needs of all human beings.
Simone Weil

To set up as a standard of public morality a notion which can neither be defined nor conceived is to open the door to every kind of tyranny.
Simone Weil

The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.
Charles de Montesquieu

Leaders are responsible not for running public opinion polls but for the consequences of their actions.
Henry A. Kissinger

I believe that a long step toward public morality will have been taken when sins are called by their right names.
Billy Sunday

If it is committed in the name of God or country, there is no crime so heinous that the public will not forgive it.
Tom Robbins

It will be readily admitted, that a degree conferred by an university, ought to be a pledge to the public that he who holds it possesses a certain quantity of knowledge.
Charles Babbage

The public character of every public servant is legitimate subject of discussion, and his fitness or unfitness for office may be fairly canvassed by any person.
Charles Babbage