A Quote by Paul Keating

The only reward in a public life is public progress. You stand back and say, 'What did I get out of it?' You look around, and the place is better, and that's it. — © Paul Keating
The only reward in a public life is public progress. You stand back and say, 'What did I get out of it?' You look around, and the place is better, and that's it.
If the general public demanded better, they'd get better, because the market­place responds to the public's needs and desires.
A society - any society - is defined as a set of mutual benefits and duties embodied most visibly in public institutions: public schools, public libraries, public transportation, public hospitals, public parks, public museums, public recreation, public universities, and so on.
The danger is in pleasing an immediate public: the immediate public that comes around you and takes you in and accepts you and gives you success and everything. Instead of that, you should wait for fifty years or a hundred years for your true public. That is the only public that interests me.
When I started out in public life there used to be a saying we'd hear from time to time, that every man who runs for public office will claim that he was born in a log cabin he built with his own hands. Well, my mother knew better. And she made sure I did too.
I want to say to you is that James Madison and Thomas Jefferson did not intend to drive a stake in the heart of religion and to drive it out of our public life. What they intended to do was to set up a system so that we could bring religion into our public life and into our private life without any of us telling the other what to do.
The true Church has never sounded out public expectations before launching her mission. Her leaders heard from God, they knew their Lord's will and did it. Their people followed them - sometimes to triumph, oftener to insults and public persecution - and their sufficient reward was the satisfaction of being right in a wrong world!
Secularism is categorically not saying that the religious may not speak out publicly or have a say in public life. It is about saying that religion alone should not confer a privileged say in public life, or greater influence on it. It really is as simple as that.
The public realm in America has two roles: it is the dwelling place of our civilization and our civic life, and it is the physical manifestation of the common good. When you degrade the public realm, you will automatically degrade the quality of your civic life and the character of all the enactments of your public life and communal life that take place there.
Help others and give something back. I guarantee you will discover that while public service improves the lives and the world around you, its greatest reward is the enrichment and new meaning it will bring your own life.
If you can look back and say, "The economy's better. Our security's better. The environment's better. Our kids' education is better," if you can say that you've made things better, then considering all the challenges out there, you should feel good. But I'm the first to acknowledge that I did not crack the code in terms of reducing this partisan fever.
It's almost embarrassing to be out in public and someone comes up to you and says, 'My mother had the same thing you did.' What do you say? I don't know what to say to make them feel better about their situation.
I'm a politician who has to for a time serve in public life, and I get death threats. And it is what it is because you've put yourself out there in the public square.
I was so inspired by Dr. King that in 1956 with my brothers and sisters and first cousins, I was only 16 years old, we went down to the public library trying to check out some books and we were told by the librarian that the library was for whites only and not for colors! It was a public library! I never went back to that public library until July 5th, 1998, by this time I'm in the Congress, for a book signing of my book "Walking with the Wind"
I hope that folks that look like me, regardless candidly of their political affiliation, not only look at me and say that, you know, I want to vote for him at the ballot box, but also make the decision that perhaps they want to put their name up for public service and for public office.
Everyone likes to have fun. But when I look back on my life, I'm not going to say, 'Oh, we're the crazy party animals.' I'll look back and say, 'Wow, we did take this seriously.' We had fun while we were out doing it, but it's just the only thing you read about: 'They're a bunch of party animals.' To be honest, that's not true.
We've got to figure out a way that we give a private sphere for our public leaders. We're not gonna get the best people in public life if we don't do that.
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