You don't tell people who disagree with you they'd be better off somewhere else. And you don't reduce them to stereotypes; you address them as fully formed people worthy of respect. You try to persuade them.
Peggy NoonanRead
The president - every president - works for us. We don't work for him. We sometimes lose track of this, or rather get the balance wrong. Respect is due and must be palpable, but now and then you have to press, to either force them to be forthcoming or force them to reveal that they won't be.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Politicians are public servants who should be accountable to the people they represent.
This quote emphasizes the fundamental principle of democracy that elected officials, including the president, are meant to serve the interests of the public rather than the other way around. It reminds us that while respect for leaders is important, citizens have a right and responsibility to demand transparency and accountability from their government.
Themes
PresidentDemocracyAccountabilityRespectPublic Service
In practice
Example use cases
During a town hall meeting to discuss government transparency.
More from Peggy Noonan
All quotes →You can get so well educated in America that your thoughts become detached from common sense. You can get so complicated in your thinking that the obvious isn't real to you anymore.
Peggy NoonanRead
If you join government, calmly make your contribution and move on. Don't go along to get along; do your best and when you have to - and you will - leave, and be something else.
Peggy NoonanRead
Wit penetrates; humor envelops. Wit is a function of verbal intelligence; humor is imagination operating on good nature.
Peggy NoonanRead
Naps are nature's way of reminding you that life is nice, like a beautiful swinging hammock strung between birth and infinity.
Peggy NoonanRead
We must try again to be alive to what the people of our country really long for in our national life: forgiveness and grace, maturity and wisdom. ...Our political leaders will know our priorities only if we tell them, again and again, and if those priorities begin to show up in the polls.
Peggy NoonanRead
Similar quotes
So efficient are the available instruments of slavery; fingerprints, lie detectors, brain washings, gas chambers; that we shiver at the thought of political change which might put these instruments in the hands of men of hate.
Bernard BaruchRead
There’s nothing entertaining about watching goons hurl venomous slurs at congressmen like the civil rights hero John Lewis and the openly gay Barney Frank. How curious that a mob fond of likening President Obama to Hitler knows so little about history that it doesn’t recognize its own small-scale mimicry of Kristallnacht.
Frank RichRead
I get really, really concerned when I see somebody, taking $600,000 in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs, will not release what they're actually saying. That's concerning.
Ta-Nehisi CoatesRead
Look: I don't want to live with a nuclear Iran. I would like to make it uncomfortable for them to seek it.
Zbigniew BrzezinskiRead
Governments are supposed to lie to their citizens.
Noam ChomskyRead
Just because you are not interested in politics, does not mean that politics is not interested in you.
PericlesRead