Top 1200 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Public Servants - Page 16

In this age, I don't care how tactically or operationally brilliant you are: if you cannot create harmony - even vicious harmony - on the battlefield based on trust across service lines, across coalition and national lines, and across civilian/military lines, you need to go home, because your leadership is obsolete.

What I learned from my work as a physician is that even with the most complicated patients, the most complicated problems, you've got to look hard to find every piece of data and evidence that you can to improve your decision-making. Medicine has taught me to be very much evidence-based and data-driven in making decisions.

I raise my stein to the builder who can remove ghettos without removing people as I hail the chef who can make omelets without breaking eggs.

Islam is not a religion of peace. Islam is a religion of submission. Islam means submit.

Television broadcasts have, in the main, been more suggestive, less specific, more distant in their images than the print press: often you knew that lump was a dead body only because a chattering reporter told you it was.

I would not allow CIA to undertake activity that is immoral, even if it is technically legal.

We Marines believe that God gave America the greatest gift He could bestow to man while he lived on this earth -freedom. We also believe He gave us another gift nearly as precious - our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Coast Guardsmen, and Marines - to safeguard that gift and guarantee no force on this earth can ever steal it away.

I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce.

I am sustained by the tranquility of an upright and loyal heart.

What I am is a principled conservative individual who believes in fiscal responsibility.

The extraordinary genius of John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie 100 years ago was their recognition that the great wealth they had amassed could be put to public good and used to solve the complex problems for which there were no other sources of capital.

It's always great to have an enemy in politics; there's no question about that.

We've done it in intelligence sharing and certain elements of security. There were parts of the department, in fact, that worked very well in Katrina, like the Coast Guard and TSA.

We need to do a top/bottom review of the federal government and for every agency administration bureaucracy that is not called for in the United States Constitution, we have to really ask the question what is its purpose, how many people work there, how much does it cost the taxpayers and what is the value to our society.

Chadaris, as far as I'm concerned, I think should be a personal choice of the women and the members of her family. I personally would not wear a chadari.

We've certainly learned a lot of lessons from Katrina, from Rita. Rita was better than Katrina. We're doing a better job planning. We're closer - more closely aligned with the Department of Defense. These things would be positive things if we were to have another attack.

A postsecondary education is the ticket to economic success in America.

I have no problem saying that I have differences in policy with the United States.

I live free of fear and full of hope.

I was a lifeguard and taught swimming lessons when I was in high school.

Over the last few years, we have seen too many politicians disregard the Constitution as they voted to increase the size and scope of government. I will use my legal experience gained as a federal attorney to hold them accountable.

I have compassion, I've told you people that over and over again. Enforcing the law overrides my compassion.

When a judge assumes the power to decide which distinctions made in a statute are legitimate and which are not, he assumes the power to disapprove of any and all legislation, because all legislation makes distinctions.

Policing has to be done compassionately and consistently. You cannot police differently in Harlem than you're policing downtown. The same laws must apply. The same procedures must be employed. Certain areas at certain times may have more significant crime and require more police presence or more assertiveness, but it has to be balanced.

The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the necessary art. If you try to run away from it, if you are scared to go to the brink, you are lost.

The American people are screaming out saying it's unfair that the wealthiest, the largest corporations who can afford the best attorneys, the best accountants, take advantage of these special tax treatments that the lobbyists have, along with lawmakers, have cooked in the books here.

Hate crimes are different from other crimes. They strike at the heart of one's identity - they strike at our sense of self, our sense of belonging. The end result is loss - loss of trust, loss of dignity, and in the worst case, loss of life.

When an American veteran comes to VA, it is not up to him to employ a team of lawyers to get VA to say yes. It is up to VA to get the veteran to yes, and that is customer service.

Assassinate me you may; intimidate me you cannot.

In order to win the war on terrorism, we have to win the war of information. Information is so very, very valuable. This is an important tool in gathering up information.

To be sure, China is nowhere as powerful as the U.S., but it has acquired the ability to impose its will on individual nations around the world. From Australia to Germany, South Africa to South Korea, political leaders are careful not to rub China the wrong way.

Bridges are perhaps the most invisible form of public architecture.

'Favoritism' is always a factor, and pressure always build for the appointment of friends of influential supporters of the President, or for the nominees of powerful Member of Congress from the incoming President's party.

No person, not even a congressman, is above the law.

Issues of energy, climate change, nuclear arms control and non-proliferation are all big deals. These are problems that we have to get right globally, not just nationally, and there are big benefits in cooperating, in terms of sharing costs, in terms of sharing risks, in terms of propagating the best answers.

I sometimes think, as bad as things seem for progressives in this world in the Trump era, it's worse than we think it is.

I think you have to look at these cold cases. If they're done properly, if the homicides are done properly, and everything's documented properly, you have a lot of concrete statements from those people that they would be able to look at them and refresh their memory.

My point is cutting spending shouldn't be reliant on the debt limit though. It's something we have to do. The good news for America is, leaders in both parties, the president, believe that we have to have significant deficit reduction. So the intent is there. And I think what America is going to demand is that our leaders come together.

People, including business leaders, are willing to be open-minded about investment dollars when they know where they are going - and what purpose they are going to be dedicated - as opposed to just going into the black abyss of the general fund.

My mother cared more about how you reasoned than about the conclusions you reached.

Americans have not only a right but a responsibility to consider the values of those who seek to lead them - whether they arise from life experience, political ideology or religious belief.

It's important that we challenge the culture of low expectations. You need to believe every child can do well.

I don't think my husband's work depends on what I say and what I do. My husband stands on his own two feet.

Hopefully, my administration will be known as a healing and unifying administration.

The bottom line is this. When it comes to preventing violent extremism and terrorism in the United States, Muslim Americans are not part of the problem, you're part of the solution.

I don't bow down to the federal government.

Simply put - walls work.

Look, I think the notion that there's a dogma or doctrine of foreign policy that gives you a textbook recipe for how to react to all situations is really nonsense.

We face cyber threats from state-sponsored hackers, hackers for hire, global cyber syndicates, and terrorists. They seek our state secrets, our trade secrets, our technology, and our ideas - things of incredible value to all of us. They seek to strike our critical infrastructure and to harm our economy.

When he hung up on Nancy Reagan, that's when he crossed his final threshold.

In my opinion, Spike Lee is a national cultural treasure - to the black community in particular but to America in general.

The new era of bottom-up politics has had politically paradoxical consequences in China. While it has made the system of governance more participatory, it has made the central government less authoritarian and, therefore, more bureaucratic and cautious.

Ideals are like the stars: we never reach them, but like the mariners of the sea, we chart our course by them.

We have vastly increased the amount of funding that is available for conservation partnerships.

I have seen throughout my professional career that the robust exchange of ideas and bipartisan compromises can bring about the best policy results.

Those who say that the West and Islam are eternally irreconcilable have more in common with the Islam extremists than they might like to think, for it's the very same argument of course advanced by Al-Qaida. And they do have it wrong. We need to work with mainstream Islam.

I don't eat green things, no vegetables.

I'm not that worried about war. Insecurity is the word I would use - insecurity and tension and conflict. I thought civilized people had abandoned wars. Sometimes people don't make rational decisions.

War is grounded in the notion of triumph and defeat. It is zero-sum.

People often ask CIA Directors what keeps them up at night. Between rogue WMD programs, cyber threats, terrorist organizations, great power rivalries, and other global threats, there's bound to be more than a single reason I'm losing sleep on any given night.