#Public Life Quotes

“I have had a number of threatening letters each week, some telling me the actual time and method of my death, and I don't like it.”

“The cultivation of a hobby and new forms of interest is a policy of first importance to a public man.”

“... the public and the private worlds are inseparably connected ... the tyrannies and servilities of the one are the tyrannies and servilities of the other.”

“I suppose, indeed, that in public life, a man whose political principles have any decided character and who has energy enough to give them effect must always expect to encounter political hostility from those of adverse principles.”

“We don’t just live in a celebrity take-down culture; we live in a take-down culture. People will find anything about you and twist it to where it’s weird or wrong or annoying or strange or bad. You have to live your life not only in spite of people who don’t understand you - you have to have more fun than they do.”

“We must leave our pets at home, when we go into the street, and meet men on broad grounds of good meaning and good sense.”

“If I'm gonna write songs about my exes, they can write songs about me. That's how it works.”

“Do you suppose that I should have lived as long as I have if I had moved in the sphere of public life, and conducting myself in that sphere like an honorable man, had always upheld the cause of right, and conscientiously set this end above all other things? Not by a very long way, gentlemen; neither would any other man.”

“The press is ferocious. It forgives nothing, it only hunts for mistakes . . . In my position anyone sane would have left a long time ago.”

“So many people supported me through my public life and I will never forget them.”

“I don't think you can be in public life without being called bad names.”

“I don't want anyone to have to interview me. I wish I didn't have to talk too much about myself.”

“Healthy, well-informed, balanced criticism is the ozone of public life.”

“There is a need for aloneness, which I don't think most people realise for an actor. It's almost having certain kinds of secrets for yourself that you'll let the whole world in on only for a moment, when you're acting. But everybody is always tugging at you. They'd all like sort of a chunk of you.”

“Woman is the embodiment of sacrifice and suffering and her advent to public life should, therefore, result in purifying it, in restraining unbridled ambition and accumulation of property.”

“I wished my wife to be not so much as suspected.”

“I am frequently attacked.”

“My son had nothing to do with policy or decision making, nor did I discuss the elections or any other matter with him.”

“Your first realization when you become an important person is that all day and all night, whatever the circumstances, people want to hear you talk about yourself.”

“I've always enjoyed being in the background, sitting in a cafe, watching people. But now, when I sit in a cafe, sometimes people watch me. It's a challenge. But it's usually people who want to say 'your book transformed my life', or something... so then I'm joyful. One moment before, I didn't want them to recognise me, but when they do, I'm glad.”

“You'll have to learn that public life takes a lot of sweat; but it doesn't need to worry you. You won't always be right, but you mustn't suffer from being wrong. That's what kills people like us.”

“Every woman in public life needs to develop skin as tough as rhinoceros hide.”

“You never have a normal family relationship in the White House; it's an impossible thing to have. You live in a goldfish bubble, and you snatch what you can for a personal life, but you never have a normal, natural existence.”

“When abroad, behaveto everyone as if interviewing an honored guest; in directing the people, act as if you were assisting at a great sacrafice; DO NOT DO TO OTHERS AS YOU WOULD NOT LIKE DONE TO YOURSELF: so there will be no murmuring against you in the country, and none in the family; your public life will arouse no ill-will nor your private life any resentment.”

“You [future first ladies] will feel that you are no longer clothing yourself, you are dressing a public monument.”

“It is a rather curious thing to have to divide one's life into personal and official compartments and temporarily put the personal side into its hidden compartment to be taken out again when one's official duties are at an end.”

“Always be on time. Never try to make any personal engagements. Do as little talking as humanly possible. Never be disturbed by anything. Always do what you're told to do as quickly as possible. Remember to lean back in a parade, so that people can see your husband. Don't get too fat to ride three on a seat. Get out of the way as quickly as you're not needed.”

“I was perfectly certain that I had nothing to offer of an individual nature and that my only chance of doing my duty as the wife of a public official was to do exactly as the majority of women were doing.”

“Unfortunately, love and compassion have been omitted from too many spheres of social interaction for too long. Usually confined to family and home, their practice in public life is considered impractical, even naive. This is tragic.”

“I don't have to keep a diary. It seems like for the last 40 years my life has been lived in the press, so I can Google any date in my history and find out what I was doing.”

“A man in public life expects to be sneered at -- it is the fault of his elevated situation, and not of himself.”

“I have practically no private life. I'm already used to this and ready for it. Yes, sometimes it is hard, but it is the choice I made.”

“As you might imagine, if you're a teenager having a couple of people with microphones and guns always following you around, that could grate on them. But you know, they've handled it with grace and I give Michelle [Obama] most of the credit for how well they've done, but I also just think they are graceful, good young, young women.”

“I'm aware that, whatever the circumstances, there will always be speculation about me.”

“I accept that people are going to call me awful things every day, and I will always defend their right to do so.”

“Politics has never been for the thin-skinned or the faint-of-heart, and if you enter the arena, you should expect to get roughed up.”

“This book [Dreams from My Father] was more of a reflection on my public life, now as a U.S. senator and before that as a state senator; how my perspectives around the issues of the day are shaped by my background.”