Ethics

"Men of honour will do their duty and will abide the consequences."

"If a man accepts an office of trust and confidence, concerning the public, especially when it is attended with profit, he is answerable to the King for his execution of that office."

"The Crown cannot ever be prejudiced by the misconduct or negligence of any of its officers."

"It is a disparagement of the Government, who put an ill man into office."

"If the confidential communications made by servants of the Crown to each other, by superiors to inferiors, or by inferiors to superiors, in the discharge of their duty to the Crown, were liable to be made public in a Court of justice at the instance of any suitor who thought proper to say "fiat justitia mat caelum," an order for discovery might involve the country in a war."

"It is the principle of the common law, that an officer ought not to take money for doing his duty."

"We are bound to assume that the Crown in the exercise of its grace and favour, will be guided solely by constitutional considerations, by regard to merit, loyalty, and public services."

"A servant of the Crown ought not to be placed at a disadvantage in comparison with other subjects."

"If public officers will infringe men's rights, they ought to pay greater damages than other men, to deter and hinder other officers from the like offences."

"It is proved that in passing . . . accounts, the accountant took his fees, while others did the business, which I fear is too often the case of public officers."

"If you use your office as you would a private trust, and the moneys as trust funds, if you faithfully perform your duty, we, the people, may put you in the Presidential chair."

"It is not fit the public trusts should be lodged in the hands of any till they are first proved and found fit for the business they are to be entrusted with."

"Public office is a public trust, the authority and opportunities of which must be used as absolutely as the public moneys for the public benefit, and not for the purposes of any individual or party."

"The appointing power of the Pope is treated as a public trust, and not as a personal perquisite."

"All power is a trust; that we are accountable for its exercise; that from the people and for the people all springs, and all must exist."

"The English doctrine that all power is a trust for the public good."

"The very essence of a free government consists in considering offices as public trusts, bestowed for the good of the country, and not for the benefit of an individual or a party."

"All government is a trust. Every branch of government is a trust, and immemorially acknowledged to be so."

"All persons possessing any portion of power ought to be strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that they act in trust, and that they are to account for their conduct in that trust to the one great Master, Author, and Founder of society."

"The office should seek the man, not man the office."

"We are not to assume that public officers will do anything unjust or tyrannical."

"There is no cause half so sacred as the cause of a people. There is no idea so uplifting as the idea of the service of humanity."

"To execute laws is a royal office; to execute orders is not to be a king. However, a political executive magistracy, though merely such, is a great trust."

"The weakling and the coward are out of place in a strong and free community. In a republic like ours the governing class is composed of the strong men who take the trouble to do the work of government; and if you are too timid or too fastidious or too careless to do your part in this work, then you forfeit your right to be considered one of the governing and you become one of the governed instead—one of the driven cattle of the political arena."

"We believe above all else that those who hold in their hands the power of government must themselves be independent—and this kind of independence means the wisdom, the experience, the courage to identify the special interests and the pressures that are always at work, to see the public interest steadily, to resist its subordination no matter what the political hazards."

"A private Life is to be preferr'd; the Honour and Gain of publick Posts, bearing no proportion with the Comfort of it."

"In government offices which are sensitive to the vehemence and passion of mass sentiment public men have no sure tenure. They are in effect perpetual office seekers, always on trial for their political lives, always required to court their restless constituents. They are deprived of their independence. Democratic politicians rarely feel they can afford the luxury of telling the whole truth to the people. And since not telling it, though prudent, is uncomfortable, they find it easier if they themselves do not have to hear too often too much of the sour truth. The men under them who report and collect the news come to realize in their turn that it is safer to be wrong before it has become fashionable to be right."

"I made my mistakes, but in all of my years in public life, I have never profited, never profited from public service—I have earned every cent. And in all of my years of public life, I have never obstructed justice. And I think, too, that I could say that in my years of public life, that I welcome this kind of examination, because people have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I am not a crook. I have earned everything I have got."

"The phrase "public office is a public trust," has of late become common property."

"When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property."

"Your every voter, as surely as your chief magistrate, under the same high sanction, though in a different sphere, exercises a public trust."

"We must not in the course of public life expect immediate approbation and immediate grateful acknowledgment of our services. But let us persevere through abuse and even injury. The internal satisfaction of a good conscience is always present, and time will do us justice in the minds of the people, even those at present the most prejudiced against us."

"Public officers are the servants and agents of the people, to execute laws which the people have made and within the limits of a constitution which they have established."

"Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the institutions of others. We do not copy our neighbours, but are an example to them. It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. But while the law secures equal justice to all alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognised; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as the reward of merit. Neither is poverty a bar, but a man may benefit his country whatever be the obscurity of his condition."

"Government is a trust, and the officers of the government are trustees; and both the trust and the trustees are created for the benefit of the people."

"I am not influenced by the expectation of promotion or pecuniary reward. I wish to be useful, and every kind of service necessary for the public good, becomes honorable by being necessary."

"Shortly after I was elected, in Nineteen Hundred and Forty-eight, I made up my mind that I would not seek another term. I have seen a great many men in public life, and one of their besetting sins is to stay in office too long. Nowadays, in such organizations as the Army and the civil service and industry, there is compulsory retirement, but no such regulations prevail in politics. I decided that I would not be guilty of this common failing, and that I should make way for younger men—and the Constitutional Amendment Number twenty-two, the two-term amendment, does not apply to me. The people responsible for the 22nd amendment thought I was not worth considering and that I'd be beaten in 1948—so I was exempted."

"I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast; for I intend to go in harm's way."

"And finally remember that nothing harms him who is really a citizen, which does not harm the state; nor yet does anything harm the state which does not harm law [order]; and of these things which are called misfortunes not one harms law. What then does not harm law does not harm either state or citizen."

"No people do so much harm as those who go about doing good."

"As to diseases, make a habit of two things—to help, or at least to do no harm. The art has three factors, the disease, the patient, the physician. The physician is the servant of the art. The patient must co-operate with the physician in combating the disease."

"There should be neither harming nor reciprocating harm."

"Because I do not want to commit the crime of giving life to beings who later may be unhappy and curse the moment of their birth."

"To bear children into this world is like carrying wood into a burning house."

"For me, a desert island is no tragedy, neither is a deserted planet."

"Mankind ought to end its existence of its own will."

"No future triumph or metamorphosis can justify the pitiful blighting of a human being against his will."

"Above all, we must make the reproductive question ethically relevant. A coin is turned around before it is handed to the beggar, yet a child is unflinchingly tossed into cosmic bruteness."

"The sign of doom is written on your brows – how long will ye kick against the pinpricks? But there is one conquest and one crown, one redemption and one solution. Know yourselves – be infertile and let the earth be silent after ye."

"You got me. But my son you will not get. You were committing a fateful mistake when assigning even procreation to my will. And you did not do this out of love..., but rather to burden me with the heaviest of all responsibilities...: Am I to perpetuate this species or not? And from now on I will ask no longer what you want; rather you shall ask what I want. And I will no longer offer further sacrifices to the God of life. I will punish you with the ability you bequeathed to me in order to torment me; I will turn my clairvoyance against you and thus bereaving you of your victims. And the abused millions will stand behind me like a plough... And evermore will two people create one human being... Thus you will feel your powerlessness begging me on your bloody knees."