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Politics & Power Quote by Peter Garrett

"What generally happens in this county is that our politicians don't serve us well because they don't tell the truth, and they don't keep their promises"

About this Quote

Garrett lands the punch with a word that’s almost certainly a tell: “county.” Whether it’s a slip for “country” or an intentional localizing, it shrinks the whole drama of democratic failure down to something municipal and familiar - the sense that disappointment isn’t an abstract crisis, it’s what you live with, street by street, election by election. Coming from Peter Garrett, a frontman-turned-politician who built a public identity on moral urgency, the line reads less like a pundit’s diagnosis than an insider’s exasperation: this is what it looks like when the ideals you sang about hit the machinery you tried to reform.

The phrasing is deliberately plain, almost dad-level blunt, and that’s the point. He’s rejecting the seductive complexity politicians often hide behind. “Don’t tell the truth” names the original sin; “don’t keep their promises” names the predictable sequel. The structure implies causality: dishonesty isn’t just unethical, it’s operational - it becomes the method by which promises get made in the first place. “Serve us well” frames politics as a job with a customer, not a calling with a halo, and the “our” pulls the audience into a shared ownership of the problem. It’s an accusation, but also a resignation: we’ve seen this movie enough times to summarize it in one breath.

Context matters because Garrett isn’t talking from the cheap seats. His credibility and his vulnerability are baked in: he knows how people perform sincerity for crowds, and he knows how institutions grind sincerity down once you’re inside them.

Quote Details

TopicHonesty & Integrity
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Garrett, Peter. (n.d.). What generally happens in this county is that our politicians don't serve us well because they don't tell the truth, and they don't keep their promises. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/what-generally-happens-in-this-county-is-that-our-128617/

Chicago Style
Garrett, Peter. "What generally happens in this county is that our politicians don't serve us well because they don't tell the truth, and they don't keep their promises." FixQuotes. Accessed February 2, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/what-generally-happens-in-this-county-is-that-our-128617/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"What generally happens in this county is that our politicians don't serve us well because they don't tell the truth, and they don't keep their promises." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/what-generally-happens-in-this-county-is-that-our-128617/. Accessed 2 Feb. 2026.

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About the Author

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Peter Garrett (born April 16, 1953) is a Musician from Australia.

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