Top 100 Public Good Quotes
#1. Capitalism is based on individual rights - not on the sacrifice of the individual to the 'public good' of the collective.
Ayn Rand
#2. It would not be for the public good to have [a majority in Congress of one party] greater [than] two to one.
Thomas Jefferson
#3. The public good must come before private interests.
Bryant McGill
#4. Honor sets all the parts of the body politic in motion, and by its very action connects them; thus each individual advances the public good, while he only thinks of promoting his own interest.
Baron De Montesquieu
#5. Yes, I'm nervous. You'll find in time most people are. They simply learn better how to disguise it, and sometimes, if they're wise, how to use their anxiety to serve the public good.
Gregory Maguire
#6. The foundations of justice are that on one shall suffer wrong; then, that the public good be promoted.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
#7. Happy will it be if our choice should be directed by a judicious estimate of our true interests, unperplexed and unbiased by considerations not connected with the public good.
Alexander Hamilton
#8. It is a just observation that the people commonly intend the Public Good. This often applies to their very errors. But their good sense would despise the adulator who should pretend they always reason right about the means of promoting it.
Alexander Hamilton
#9. Poverty is dishonorable, not in itself, but when it is a proof of laziness, intemperance, luxury, and carelessness; whereas in a person that is temperate, industrious, just and valiant, and who uses all his virtues for the public good, it shows a great and lofty mind.
Plutarch
#10. Suspicion is a virtue as long as its object is the public good, and as long as it stays within proper bounds ... Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel.
Patrick Henry
#11. To suggest social action for the public good to the city London is like discussing The Origin of Species to a Bishop sixty years ago.
John Maynard Keynes
#12. Under the benignant providence of Almighty God the representatives of the States and of the people are again brought together to deliberate for the public good.
James K. Polk
#13. Public condemnation goes a long way in establishing what is and what is not acceptable in a society. The public good will prevail if the public demands it.
Laurence Overmire
#14. Leadership is for those who love the public good and are endowed and trained to administer it.
Thornton Wilder
#15. The corporation was originally conceived as a public institution whose purpose was to serve national interests and advance the public good.
Joel Bakan
#16. I would jump down Etna for any public good - but I hate a mawkish popularity.
John Keats
#17. Harshness towards individuals who flout the laws and commands of the state is for the public good; no greater crime against the public interest is possible than to show leniency to those who violate it.
Cardinal Richelieu
#18. I now add, farther, that the apostle's argument is so far from proving it to be the duty of people to obey, and submit to, such rulers as act in contradiction to the public good, and so to the design of their office, that it proves the direct contrary.
Jonathan Mayhew
#19. [Tax] dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not.
Sarah Palin
#20. The stability of global financial markets is a public good. If governments fail to protect this public good, then those who suffer are the working people of the world whose jobs, whose homes, and whose standard of living depends on it.
Kevin Rudd
#21. It is when the politician loves neither the public good nor himself, or when his love for himself is limited and is satisfied by the trappings of office, that the public interest is badly served.
John F. Kennedy
#22. There are many special interests skilful at manipulating circumstances and communications in such a way as to benefit their own ends and not necessarily the public good.
Randal Marlin
#23. The powers contained in a constitution ... ought to be construed liberally in advancement of the public good.
Alexander Hamilton
#24. And thirdly, the FDA occasionally does some genuine public good with whatever energies it has left over after serving the vested political and commercial interest of its first two activities.
G. Edward Griffin
#25. My public life is before you; and I know you will believe me when I say, that when I sit down in solitude to the labours of my profession, the only questions I ask myself are, What is right? What is just? What is for the public good?
Joseph Howe
#26. Suspicion is a virtue as long its object is the preservation of public good
Patrick Henry
#27. All geniuses born women are lost to the public good.
Mary Pipher
#28. The task of government was not to stop selfish striving - a hopeless task - but to harness it for the public good.
Ron Chernow
#29. My belief is the majority of people in politics are just interested in pursuing this career in politics, and doing what's necessary to get themselves re-elected. And if that happens to coincide with the public good, great. But if it doesn't, the public good loses out.
Dick Murphy
#30. We like to have a point of view in our stories, not an obvious moral, but a worthwhile theme ... All we are trying to do is give the public good entertainment. That is all they want.
Walt Disney
#31. It is just observation that the people commonly intend the Public Good.
Alexander Hamilton
#32. To be interested in the public good we must be disinterested, that is, not interested in goods in which our personal selves are wrapped up.
George Herbert Mead
#33. Knowledge is a public good and increases in value as the number of people possessing it increases.
John Wilbanks
#34. The price of power is responsibility for the public good.
Bill Vaughan
#35. The extraordinary genius of John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie 100 years ago was their recognition that the great wealth they had amassed could be put to public good and used to solve the complex problems for which there were no other sources of capital.
Judith Rodin
#36. I feel like we're stuck in the former mode of reacting because that's what gains traction in Washington. But I really believe we need a robust public good argument. Net neutrality is not just about creating the next Instagram or Farmville or whatever.
Astra Taylor
#37. The object of every free government is the public good, and all lesser interests yield to it. That of every tyrannical government, is the happiness and aggrandizement of one, or a few, and to this the public felicity, and every other interest must submit.
Marcus Junius Brutus The Younger
#38. Undermining life-affirming social solidarities and any viable notion of the public good, right-wing politicians trade in forms of idiocy and superstition that mesmerize the illiterate and render the thoughtful cynical and disengaged.
Henry Giroux
#39. The noblest motive is the public good.
Virgil
#40. When journalism is treated as just another widget in a commercial enterprise, the focus isn't on truth, verification or public good, but productivity and output.
Heather Brooke
#41. That man is the most loyal who aims at the noblest motive, and that motive the public good.
Virgil
#42. We need to start seeing privacy as a commons - as some kind of a public good that can get depleted as too many people treat it carelessly or abandon it too eagerly. What is privacy for? This question needs an urgent answer.
Evgeny Morozov
#43. It is an old liberal theme that conservative ideas, being red in tooth and claw, cannot possibly emerge from any notion of the public good.
Charles Krauthammer
#44. If it is true that vice can never be done away with, the science of government consists of making it contribute to the public good.
Luc De Clapiers
#45. The whole, 'Is the Internet a good thing or a bad thing'? We're done with that. It's just a thing. How to maximise its civic value, its public good - that's the really big challenge.
Clay Shirky
#46. If you talk to most businessmen, they'll say that what they do is for the public good, but you know they're just greedy, and consumers are just consuming for the sake of their own greed.
P. J. O'Rourke
#47. I wish to be useful, and every kind of service necessary to the public good becomes honorable by being necessary.
Nathan Hale
#48. He that doth public good for multitudes, finds few are truly grateful
Philip Massinger
#49. Our sense that a library is a public good and our idea of what such a place should look like derived precisely from a model created in Rome several thousand years ago.
Stephen Greenblatt
#50. Self-interest, be it enlightened, works indirectly for the public good.
William H. Prescott
#51. The public good is promoted best by people pursuing their own private interests. This bothers some people because they're more concerned with motives than with results.
Walter E. Williams
#52. History teaches us that there have been but few infringements of personal liberty by the state which have not been justified, as they are here, in the name of righteousness and the public good, and few which have not been directed, as they are now, at politically helpless minorities.
Harlan F. Stone
#53. in all well-regulated communities, the conveniency of an individual must give way to public good'.
Naresh Fernandes
#54. He doth much who loveth much. He doth much who doth well. He doth well who ministereth to the public good rather than to his own.
Thomas A Kempis
#55. Zeal for the public good is the characteristic of a man of honor and a gentleman, and must take the place of pleasures, profits and all other private gratifications.
Richard Steele
#56. How can there ever possibly be a conflict between my private interests and the public good?
Ashleigh Brilliant
#57. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.
Adam Smith
#58. All through history, there have always been movements where business was not just about the accumulation of proceeds but also for the public good.
Anita Roddick
#59. So there's always been this clash between what is the public good - that which belongs to all of us in common - and what can be exploited for a private interest.
Neil Abercrombie
#60. You can't serve the public good without the truth as a bottom line.
Carl Bernstein
#61. A national evil requires a national remedy; let not this any longer be delayed: let your minds expand, free from every narrow principle, and let the public good become the sole object of your united Christian efforts.
Joseph Lancaster
#62. If I can't do something for the public good, what the hell am I doing?
Anita Roddick
#63. People are so docile right now. It is almost as if good government means when the politicians lie to us for our own good, for the public good, and bad government is when politicians lie for their own selfish interests.
James Bovard
#64. Marriage is a public good, not just a private relationship. We have a public stake in healthy marriages and two-parent families. Our society suffers with the collapse of the relationship of the couple who brings a child into the world.
William J Doherty
#65. Showing oneself eager for office was a sign of being unworthy of it, for the office-seeker probably had selfish views rather than the public good in mind.
Gordon S. Wood
#66. The prison industrial complex is perhaps, at least domestically, the most striking example of us putting profit before people. It all stems from one basic misunderstanding: that the public good can be shepherded by private interests.
Eugene Jarecki
#67. I recognized that information was, in many respects, like a public good, and it was this insight that made it clear to me that it was unlikely that the private market would provide efficient resource allocations whenever information was endogenous.
Joseph Stiglitz
#68. Honest statesmanship is the wise employment of individual meanness for the public good.
Abraham Lincoln
#69. It may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more constant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves.
James Madison
#70. Legally speaking, the term 'public rights' is as vague and indefinite as are the terms 'public health,' 'public good,' 'public welfare,' and the like. It has no legal meaning, except when used to describe the separate, private, individual rights of a greater or less number of individuals.
Lysander Spooner
#71. The public good is in nothing more essentially interested, than in the protection of every individual's private rights.
William Blackstone
#72. Knowledge should be a public good, and I want my ideas to have as much exposure as possible.
Sheena Iyengar
#73. Well-reported news is a public good; bad news is bad for everyone.
Jill Lepore
#74. If you believe that health care is a public good to be guaranteed by the state, then a single-payer system is the next best alternative. Unfortunately, it is fiscally unsustainable without rationing.
Charles Krauthammer
#75. Personal faith can be a powerful force for public good.
David Price
#76. It is too early for politicians to presume on our forgetting that the public good, the real welfare of the great body of the people, is the supreme object to be pursued; and that no form of government whatever has any other value than as it may be fitted for the attainment of this object.
James Madison
#77. To the cheater, there is no such thing as honesty, and to Republicans the idea of serving the public good is counterfeit on the face of it - they never felt such an urge, and therefore it must not exist.
Garrison Keillor
#78. As a society we can't live without moral considerations. We do have to protect the public good. And markets are not designed to do that, so we need a political process.
George Soros
#79. Television news is a delicate balance of serving public good and private gain.
Jessica Savitch
#80. That kind always has the public good as a motive to justify every abomination.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#81. Because primarily of the power of the Internet, people of modest means can band together and amass vast sums of money that can change the world for some public good if they all agree.
William J. Clinton
#82. The most powerful force possessed by the individual citizen is her own government ... Government is the only organized mechanism that makes possible that level of shared disinterest known as the public good.
John Ralston Saul
#83. I champion sensibly designed racial affirmative action, not because I have benefited from it personally - though I have. I support it because, on balance, it is conducive to the public good.
Randall Kennedy
#84. Baseball, like some other sports, poses as a sacred institution dedicated to the public good, but it is actually a big, selfish business with a ruthlessness that many big businesses would never think of displaying.
Jackie Robinson
#85. Twitter is an amazing public tool with an incredible capacity for public good.
Rachel Sklar
#86. Banks do not create money for the public good. They are businesses owned by private shareholders. Their purpose is to make a profit.
John Rogers
#87. We need to figure how to defend higher education as a public good. If we can't do that, we're in trouble.
Henry Giroux
#88. The greatest danger to liberty today comes from the men who are most needed and most powerful in modern government, namely, the efficient expert administrators exclusively concerned with what they regard as the public good.
Friedrich August Von Hayek
#89. The English doctrine that all power is a trust for the public good.
Thomas B. Macaulay
#90. Industry is far more efficient than the university in making use of scientific developments for the public good.
Reported in 1981, as a co-founder of Genentech, Inc., a company to offer gene-splicing products.
Herbert Boyer
#91. Reciprocal marketing, promotions and links. In public good experiments, behavioral economists have demonstrated that the potential for reciprocal actions by players increases the rate of contribution to the public good, providing evidence for the importance of reciprocity in social situations.
Carl William Brown
#92. The business of business should not be about money. It should be about responsibility. It should be about public good, not private greed
Anita Roddick
#93. The acceptance of corporatism causes us to deny and undermine the legitimacy of the individual as citizen in a democracy. The result of such a denial is a growing imbalance which leads to our adoration of self-interest and our denial of the public good.
John Ralston Saul
#94. Every great example of punishment has in it some injustice, but the suffering individual is compensated by the public good.
Tacitus
#95. While I believe our Constitution allows for State and local governments to execute the power of eminent domain for those purposes that specifically serve the public good, condemning property solely to implement economic development plans is not serving the public good.
Solomon Ortiz
#96. It is the essence of responsibility to put the public good ahead of personal gain
Robert Kennedy
#97. A people fired ... with love of their country and of liberty, a zeal for the public good, and a noble emulation of glory, will not be disheartened or dispirited by a succession of unfortunate events. But like them, may we learn by defeat the power of becoming invincible.
Abigail Adams
#99. What are you planning?" I asked, as we turned toward the grand ballroom.
"Just a small demonstration for the public good," he said. "I am so sorry."
"You're apologizing in advance."
"Yes."
Never a good sign.
Ilona Andrews
#100. May I say, finally, that I have no illusions of grandeur; quite to the contrary, I am very humble in my knowledge that through forty years of my life my life has been an open book of service to my fellow architects and for the public good.
Ralph Thomas Walker
