Public Life quotes

There is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life.

You will find as you grow older that courage is the rarest of all qualities to be found in public life.

My favorite time in the cycles of public life is the time when the Pope is dead and they haven’t elected a new one. There’s no one in the world who is infallible for those weeks. And you know, I don’t miss it.

Our public life withers when only the most extreme voices get attention. Most of all, democracy breaks down when the average person feels their voice doesn’t matter; that the system is rigged in favor of the rich or the powerful or some narrow interest.

A nation which has forgotten the quality of courage which in the past has been brought to public life is not as likely to insist upon or regard that quality in its chosen leaders today – and in fact we have forgotten.

As his vice president for eight years, I learned more from Ronald Reagan than from anyone I encountered in all my years of public life.