Public officers are the servants and agents of the people, to execute the laws which the people have made.
Officeholders are the agents of the people, not their masters. Not only is their time and labor due to the government, but they should scrupulously avoid in their political action, as well as in the discharge of their official duty, offending by a display of obtrusive partisanship their neighbors who have relations with them as public officials.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Public officials should serve the people rather than dominate them, maintaining impartiality in their duties.
This quote emphasizes that those in positions of authority, such as government officials, are meant to act as representatives of the people who elected them, rather than exercising control over them. It insists on the importance of neutrality and fairness in government affairs, advising officials to avoid showing blatant favoritism that could alienate or offend constituents, highlighting the ethical responsibility of public servants towards their community.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a political speech advocating for transparency, this quote illustrates the responsibility of elected officials.
More from Grover Cleveland
All quotes βUnswerving loyalty to duty, constant devotion to truth, and a clear conscience will overcome every discouragement and surely lead the way to usefulness and high achievement.
Though the people support the government; the government should not support the people.
Your every voter, as surely as your chief magistrate, exercises a public trust.
It is the responsibility of the citizens to support their government. It is not the responsibility of the government to support its citizens.
Once the coffers of the federal government are opened to the public, there will be no shutting them again.
Similar quotes
The President can exercise no power which cannot be fairly and reasonably traced to some specific grant of power in the Federal Constitution or in an act of Congress passed in pursuance thereof. There is no undefined residuum of power which he can exercise because it seems to him to be in the public interest.
The Iranian regime supports violent extremists and challenges us across the region. It pursues a nuclear capability that could spark a dangerous arms race and raise the prospect of a transfer of nuclear know-how to terrorists. Its president denies the Holocaust and threatens to wipe Israel off the map. The danger from Iran is grave, it is real.
I wish it were simply a nightmare, but I think that any reasonable person watching American politics would come to the conclusion that a second Bush administration would in fact incorporate a more radicalized version of what we've seen in the first administration.
We may be assured by past experience, that such a practice [as some states charging high taxes on goods from other states] would be introduced by future contrivances; and both by that and a common knowledge of human affairs, that it would nourish unceasing animosities, and not improbably terminate in serious interruptions of the public tranquility.
Pakistan's political instability is its greatest vulnerability, and a decline in U.S. power would reduce America's ability to aid Pakistan's consolidation and development.
Extensive violations of human rights (torture, forced reduction of living standards for much of the population, police-sponsored death squads, destruction of representative institutions or of independent unions, etc.) are directly correlated with US government support. The linkage is not accidental; rather it is systematic. The reason is obvious enough. Client fascism often improves the business climate for American corporations, quite generally the guiding factor in foreign policy.