Quotes about Service

In few other professions are you required, each and every day, to weigh so many competing claims—between different sets of constituents, between the interests of your state and the interests of the nation, between party loyalty and your own sense of independence, between the value of service and obligations to your family. There is a constant danger, in the cacophony of voices, that a politician loses his moral bearings and finds himself entirely steered by the winds of public opinion.

Thanks for sticking with this," Axe said, his voice choked up. I put my arm around him, feeling my own emotions swell. "This is why we do the work," I said. "This. Right here.

"There are things more important," he told me, "than getting reelected."

How many of us are tested in that way, asked to risk careers we've long dreamed of in the service of some greater good?

The fuss of being president, the pomp, the press, the physical constraints - all that I could have done without. The actual work, though? The work, I loved. Even when it didn't love me back.

Hope involves giving a great deal of yourself away.

Proactive people make love a verb. Love is something you do: the sacrifices you make, the giving of self, like a mother bringing a newborn into the world... Love is a value that is actualized through loving actions. Proactive people subordinate feeling to values. Love, the feeling, can be recaptured.

My mission is to live with integrity and to make a difference in the lives of others.

My friend, love is a verb. Love—the feeling—is a fruit of love, the verb. So love her. Serve her. Sacrifice. Listen to her. Empathize. Appreciate. Affirm her. Are you willing to do that?

Life is a mission and not a career.

The history of the world teaches that the power of joy in people doesn't come in getting, it always comes in giving, contributing, adding more. The more you give, the more you live. If you're about something better, live for something higher than self.

It is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual than to labor diligently for the salvation of the masses.