“In the performance of a task thus generally delineated I shall endeavor to select men whose diligence and talents will insure in their respective stations able and faithful cooperation, depending for the advancement of the public service more on the integrity and zeal of the public officers than on their numbers.”

First Inaugural Address (4 March 1829).
1820s

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update April 7, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "In the performance of a task thus generally delineated I shall endeavor to select men whose diligence and talents will …" by Andrew Jackson?
Andrew Jackson photo
Andrew Jackson 41
American general and politician, 7th president of the Unite… 1767–1845

Related quotes

“The task will be more fruitfully performed if the citizen, and his agents in public offices, understand the ecology of government.”

John M. Gaus (1894–1969) American political scientist

Source: Reflections on public administration, 1947, p. 19

Thomas Jefferson photo

“The habit of using ardent spirit, by men in public office, has occasioned more injury to the public service, and more trouble to me, than any other circumstance which has occurred in the internal concerns of the country, during my administration. And were I to commence my administration again, with the knowledge which from experience I have acquired, the first question which I would ask, with regard to every candidate for public office, should be, "Is he addicted to the use of ardent spirit?"”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Attributed by an unnamed "distinguished officer of the United States Government" in the Sixth Report of the American Temperance Society, May, 1833, pp. 10-11 http://books.google.com/books?id=h_c0wbAOQ5kC&pg=PA237&dq=%22The+habit+of+using+ardent+spirit%22.
Later variant: Were I to commence my administration again,... the first question I would ask respecting a candidate would be, "Does he use ardent spirits?"
Attributed

Benjamin Harrison photo

“There is no constitutional or legal requirement that the President shall take the oath of office in the presence of the people, but there is so manifest an appropriateness in the public induction to office of the chief executive officer of the nation that from the beginning of the Government the people, to whose service the official oath consecrates the officer, have been called to witness the solemn ceremonial.”

Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901) American politician, 23rd President of the United States (in office from 1889 to 1893)

Inaugural address (1889)
Context: There is no constitutional or legal requirement that the President shall take the oath of office in the presence of the people, but there is so manifest an appropriateness in the public induction to office of the chief executive officer of the nation that from the beginning of the Government the people, to whose service the official oath consecrates the officer, have been called to witness the solemn ceremonial. The oath taken in the presence of the people becomes a mutual covenant. The officer covenants to serve the whole body of the people by a faithful execution of the laws, so that they may be the unfailing defense and security of those who respect and observe them, and that neither wealth, station, nor the power of combinations shall be able to evade their just penalties or to wrest them from a beneficent public purpose to serve the ends of cruelty or selfishness.

Nile Kinnick photo
Robert M. La Follette Sr. photo

“Free government is government by public opinion. Upon the soundness and integrity of public opinion depends the destiny of our democracy.”

Robert M. La Follette Sr. (1855–1925) American politician

"Fooling the People as a Fine Art", La Follette's Magazine (April 1918)

Adam Smith photo

“It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: The Wealth of Nations (1776), Book I, Chapter XI, Part III, Conclusion of the Chapter, p. 292.
Context: The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.

Joel Bakan photo

“The corporation was originally conceived as a public institution whose purpose was to serve national interests and advance the public good.”

Joel Bakan (1959) Canadian writer, musician, filmmaker and legal scholar

Source: The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (2004), Chapter 6, Reckoning, p. 153

David Morrison photo
John Holt (Lord Chief Justice) photo

“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.”

John Holt (Lord Chief Justice) (1642–1710) English lawyer and Lord Chief Justice of England

Ashby v. White (1703), 2 Raym. 956.
Ashby v. White (1703)

Johann Gottlieb Fichte photo

Related topics