Public officers are the servants and agents of the people, to execute the laws which the people have made.
Grover ClevelandRead
Party honesty is party expediency.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that political honesty is often sacrificed for practical benefits.
Grover Cleveland's quote points to the idea that, in politics, individuals often prioritize expediency and advantage over genuine honesty. It implies that political actions may be driven more by the desire for practical outcomes—which may not align with true integrity—rather than adhering strictly to ethical principles. This highlights a common tension within political discourse where moral integrity and practical decision-making may conflict.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a political debate to emphasize the importance of integrity.
Public officers are the servants and agents of the people, to execute the laws which the people have made.
Unswerving 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.
Politics and morality are inseparable. And as morality's foundation is religion, religion and politics are necessarily related. We need religion as a guide. We need it because we are imperfect, and our government needs the church, because only those humble enough to admit they're sinners can bring to democracy the tolerance it requires in order to survive.
What stuns me most about contemporary politics is not even that the system has been so badly corrupted by money. It is that so few people get the connection between their lives and what the bozos do in Washington and our state capitols.
I really feel that political will is born out of popular will.
If a British government experienced such a long and persistent resistance to domestic policy in England, then that policy would almost certainly be changed... We have asserted that we are political prisoners, and everything about out country - our arrests, interrogations, trials, and prison conditions - show that we are politically motivated.
The marginalized did not create identity politics: their identities have been forced on them by dominant groups, and politics is the most effective method of revolt.
Irish tory employers hid[e] their sweatshops behind orange flags, and Irish home rule landlords us[e] the green sunburst of Erin to cloak their rack-renting in the festering slums of our Irish towns.
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