Public Interest Quotes

#1. Conservation will ultimately boil down to rewarding the private landowner who conserves the public interest.

Aldo Leopold

#2. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it ... which for the majority translates as 'Bread and Circuses'.

Robert A. Heinlein

#3. Wherefore for the public interest and benefit of human society it is requisite that the highest obligations possible should be laid upon the consciences of men.

Isaac Barrow

#4. There are many organizations and individuals advocating for the public interest online - what's good for ordinary people - but other interests are more numerous and powerful than they are. I want that to change. And that's what I want to do next.

Sue Gardner

#5. People of the middle sort like us, thinking people that is, are always tongue-tied and awkward. What is the reason of it? Whether it is the lack of public interest, or whether it is we are so honest we don't want to deceive one another.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#6. When a donor is asked to contribute to a group whose innocuous-sounding name makes it appear to be doing work in the public interest, that donor should have a clear picture of where his or her money is going.

Eric Schneiderman

#7. No one's personal life is in the public interest. It's gossip, bottom line. End of story.

Kevin Spacey

#8. political life came to be dominated by a pattern of interest-group politics that the era's political scientists came to call "pluralist," a form of democracy marked more by competition among organizations and lobbyists than by a sense of the public interest.

Ira Katznelson

#9. In the long run, the public interest depends on private virtue.

James Q. Wilson

#10. A corporation has no rights except those given it by law. It can exercise no power except that conferred upon it by the people through legislation, and the people should be as free to withhold as to give, public interest and not private advantage being the end in view.

William Jennings Bryan

#11. Facebook draws from the public and public-interest sphere, a simultaneously bold and modest step towards acknowledging that our new networked technologies deeply affect our lives in ways not always captured or best shaped by the typical template of consumer and seller.

Jonathan Zittrain

#12. Whenever competition is feasible it is, for all its imperfections, superior to regulation as a means of serving the public interest.

Alfred Kahn

#13. The public is not interested in news in the public interest.

Terry Pratchett

#14. When we control business in the public interest we are also bound to encourage it in the public interest or it will be a bad thing for everybody and worst of all for those on whose behalf the control is nominally exercised.

Theodore Roosevelt

#15. Corporate America corrupted the watchdogs that were supposed to be guarding the public interest by feeding them under the table.

Arianna Huffington

#16. No public interest is anything other or nobler than a massed accumulation of private interests.

Mark Twain

#17. The Federal Reserve System is a legal private monopoly of the money supply operated for the benefit of the few under the guise of protecting and promoting the public interest.

Anonymous

#18. The public interest may be presumed to be what men would choose if they saw clearly, thought rationally, acted disinterestedly and benevolently.

Walter Lippmann

#19. When the target of crime is armed, there is more law present, more public policy present, and more public interest served than by all 20,000 gun laws in force.

John Longenecker

#20. A man, if he be active and energetic, can hardly fail also, be he never so selfish, of benefiting the general public interest.

Benjamin Butler

#21. I'm not deluded enough to think that everyone who knows my name is a listener. You know, I hope that part of that interest - part of that public interest - has to do with me still making records that people like.

John Mayer

#22. 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

#23. If you are given a public responsibility, you have to listen, weigh up all the issues, but ultimately you have to form a view of what you genuinely think is in the public interest ... put the public interest above the vested interest.

Graeme Samuel

#24. You are in the field to defend the public interest, the financial truth for investors and the funds that should support the widow and the orphan.

Clarence W. Barron

#25. 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

#26. As the contest proceeded, public interest increased and the entire country watched to see which company would win the big government subsidies through the mountains.

John Moody

#27. The story of how the Laffer Curve got its name begins with a 1978 article by Jude Wanniski in 'The Public Interest' entitled, 'Taxes, Revenues, and the Laffer Curve.'

Arthur Laffer

#28. Also, the Federal Advisory Committee should be enlarged and reorganized. Members should be chosen for the broadest possible representation of the public interest, their main qualification: ability.

Wright Patman

#29. It is important that politicians defend their ability to act without fear or favour, and it is in the public interest that they hold ministers and public servants to account.

Jeremy Corbyn

#30. The papers, you know, they're always gonna just make stuff up. They think it's in the public interest.

Jake Bugg

#31. One can't allow blind loyalty to a friendship to lead one away from acting in the public interest. If Martin [Schulz] were to propose something that was totally absurd, our friendship would not prevent me from doing the opposite.

Jean-Claude Juncker

#32. Every woman who has any margin of time or money to spare should adopt some one public interest, some philanthropic undertaking,or some social agitation of reform, and give to that cause whatever time and work she may be able to afford ...

Frances Power Cobbe

#33. By encouraging men to spy and report on one another, by making it in the private interest of large numbers of citizens to evade the controls, and by making actions illegal that are in the public interest, the controls undermine individual morality.

Milton Friedman

#34. An individual, in promoting his own interest, may injure the public interest; a nation, in promoting the general welfare, may check the interest of a part of its members.

Friedrich List

#35. The young man is also an idealist. He has yet to find out that what's in the public interest is not what the public is interested in.

Terry Pratchett

#36. Public interest criteria does not mean criteria that the public decides are in its interest. It means that the elite - via various appointed bodies - decide what the public's interest is for them.

Mark Steyn

#37. But the Nixon Administration gave the press an identity of its own, separate from the public interest, and then began to characterize the press either as friendly or hostile or what have you.

Timothy Crouse

#38. I want to encourage public interest in space. I have never let my condition stop me. You only live once.

Stephen Hawking

#39. Cultural standards evolve. The meaning of the public interest also, of course, evolves.

Reed Hundt

#40. Advertising justifies its existence when used in the public interest-it is much too powerful a tool to use solely for commercial purposes.

Howard Gossage

#41. A majority of Americans support Social Security and Medicare, a progressive tax system and a government that regulates business in the public interest, but most share deep skepticism about the government's ability to do all this well.

Adam Davidson

#42. Journalism has always existed in two different realities ... the economic marketplace and [the] special institution to serve the public interest. The traditional balance between those two has become destabilized. Economic reality has taken over.

Joan Konner

#43. The circumstances seemed to be simple; but they who understood such matters declared that the duration of a trial depended a great deal more on the public interest felt in the matter than upon its own nature.

Anthony Trollope

#44. People do want to know, there is curiosity, it is a matter of public interest. That is not sufficient reason to disclose information. It is not sufficient that there be curiosity and interest that you want to disclose information.

Tharman Shanmugaratnam

#45. Roosevelt had defined the public interest in the previously private struggle between labor and capital.

Doris Kearns Goodwin

#46. I think prime ministers, I actually think Cabinet ministers should be subject to intense scrutiny, I think that's in the public interest, even if some of the allegations made aren't right and so on, and they have to correct the record, it doesn't matter.

Alexander Downer

#47. I think the police and the FBI are quite capable of sacrificing the rights of a private citizen to what they consider the public interest.

Rex Stout

#48. Positive market incentives operating in the public interest are too few and far between, and are also up against a seemingly never-ending expansion of perverse incentives and lobbying.

Mo Ibrahim

#49. It's important to know that, unlike lawyers, land surveyors put the public interest first. That means we're not biased by our client - this means that the property line will be drawn in the most equitable position, regardless of which neighbor is paying the bill.

Mark Mason

#50. Since there is no such entity as 'the public,' since the public is merely a number of individuals, any claimed or implied conflict of 'the public interest' with private intersts means that the interests of some men are to be sacrificed to the interest and wishes of others.

Ayn Rand

#51. The diseased pride [of artistic individualists] was not even conscious of a public interest, and would have found all political terms utterly tasteless and insignificant. It was no longer a question of one man one vote, but of one man one universe.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

#52. My actions were intended solely to secure the repayment of funds, which I considered to be in the public interest, and I accept sole responsibility. I did not advise the prime minister of the means by which Sen. Duffy's expenses were repaid, either before or after the fact.

Nigel S. Wright

#53. It's a rarity when someone takes a political risk in Washington today in the public interest.

Arlen Specter

#54. We have a responsibility to hold both sides accountable to the public interest, but that doesn't mean we reflexively and artificially hold both sides 'equally' accountable when the facts don't warrant that.

Mark Halperin

#55. The function of journalism is, primarily, to uncover vital new information in the public interest and to put that information in a context so that we can use it to improve the human condition.

Joshua Oppenheimer

#56. The public interest requires doing today those things that men of intelligence and good will would wish, five or ten years hence, had been done.

Edmund Burke

#57. I'm not trying to top anything. I'm trying to be useful, to play a positive role, to serve the public interest.

Al Gore

#58. The American Labor Movement has consistently demonstrated its devotion to the public interest. It is, and has been, good for all America.

John F. Kennedy

#59. Bad as "independence" is, the main fault of the Federal Reserve System - an admirable system if conducted in the public interest - is that too much power and control rests in the hands of people whose private interests are directly affected by the Federal Reserves' actions.

Wright Patman

#60. However, when the privilege depends solely on the broad, undifferentiated claim of public interest in the confidentiality of such conversations, a confrontation with other values arises.

Warren E. Burger

#61. I hope that 'Jaws' will have brought sharks into the public interest at a time when we desperately need to reevaluate our care for the environment.

Peter Benchley

#62. It is in the public interest to know what our governors are up to. If they are up to doing good, then they are only too happy to let us know. When they are up to no good, they want that kept secret.

Jimmy Reid

#63. The biggest mistake that you will make in life is believing that governments act in the public interest.

Steven Magee

#64. Writing is not chewing your nails and picking your teeth, but a matter of public interest.

Alfred Doblin

#65. Life on Earth is at an ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by disaster ... I think the human race doesn't have a future if it doesn't go into space. I therefore want to encourage public interest in space.

Peter Diamandis

#66. I'm an entertainer. I don't go round saying I'm a paragon of virtue, so that is clearly not in the public interest.

Steve Coogan

#67. Philanthropic leaders genially speak of complementing government, not competing with it as if monopoly were good and competition destructive-thus unwittingly conspiring against the public interest.

Richard Cornuelle

#68. But the reporter has the responsibility to determine, number one, whether that is true, and number two, to make a judgment as to whether it's in the public interest and whether or not it should be part of the debate.

Bob Schieffer

#69. You will find in me a loyal head of state who is ready listen and understand, warn and advise as well as to defend the public interest at all times.

King Felipe VI

#70. With deregulation, one sector of the economy after another is "liberated" to capital's unmonitored authority. The very notion that there is a public interest is contested.

Herbert Schiller

#71. They may then be willing to cast principled votes based on an educated understanding of the public interest in the face of polls suggesting that the public itself may have quite a different understanding of where its interest lies.

James L. Buckley

#72. Politicians pay more attention to interest groups than to the public interest.

Alice Rivlin

#73. In the public interest, therefore, it is better that we lose the services of the exceptions who are good Judges after they are seventy and avoid the presence on the Bench of men who are not able to keep up with the work, or to perform it satisfactorily.

William Howard Taft

#74. The bottom line is that our government is not intelligent about how it pursues the public interest, because its decisions are not informed decisions (and its interest is generally not the public's).

Robert David Steele

#75. There are excellent public interest grounds to have a search engine whose rankings are transparent.

Mitch Kapor

#76. Public Interest is a term used by every politician to support his ideas.

W. M. Kiplinger

#77. Why something in the public interest such as television news can be fought over, like a chain of hamburger stands, eludes me.

Jimmy Breslin

#78. As a public interest lawyer, your fund of injustice will never be empty.

Ralph Nader

#79. People who intend only to serve public interest are led by invisible hand to private interest which was no part of their intention.

Milton Friedman

#80. Deep Throat did serve the public interest by providing the guidance and information to us.

Bob Woodward

#81. We believe PR should be practiced to serve the public interest, to develop mutual understanding between organizations and their publics.

James E. Grunig

#82. The battles after the wars are over can be the toughest; there's no longer the public interest that accompanies, for good and for ill, the start of combat.

Nancy Gibbs

#83. The essence of government is concern for the widest possible public interest; the essence of the humanities, it seems to me, is private study, thought, and passion. Publicity is a essential to the one as privacy is to the other.

John Updike

#84. A newspaper is a private enterprise owing nothing whatsoever to the public, which grants it no franchise. It is therefore affected with no public interest.

William Peter Hamilton

#85. In 1998, I founded the American Center for Law and Justice, probably the premier public interest law firm in America defending the rights of believers.

Pat Robertson

#86. In 2007, when I was a lawyer for the public interest group Free Press, I helped draft the complaint to the FCC against Comcast for secretly blocking BitTorrent and other technologies.

Marvin Ammori

#87. We count, in the future as in the past, on the driving power of individual initiative, on the incentive of fair private profit, strengthened of course with the acceptance of those obligations to the public interest which rest upon us all.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

#88. Broadcasters have a responsibility to serve the public interest and protect Americans from objectionable content, particularly during the hours when children are likely to be watching.

Bart Gordon

#89. I developed an interest in supporting independent journalists in a way that leverages their work to the greatest extent possible, all in support of the public interest.

Pierre Omidyar

#90. Public interest in most of the Middle East was slight at that time; the Arab-Israeli conflict was all that people were interested in and that was not my specialty.

Juan Cole

#91. As so often happens in politics, what appears to be politically expedient for those in power rarely overlaps with the public interest. The lesser evils of the regime become entrenched, while the greater good is never realized.

Jason Stearns

#92. One of the most powerful defences the media can offer for controversial actions is, of course, public interest.

Rowan Williams

#93. Democracy does not have to be a bloodsport, it can be an honorable enterprise that advances the public interest.

William J. Clinton

#94. For the purposes of this paper and discussion, I will equate public service with 'public interest' and 'public welfare', which seem to me to be virtually synonymous (Nockels, 1930).

Anonymous

#95. I carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest. There are all sorts of documents that would have made a big impact that I didn't turn over, because harming people isn't my goal. Transparency is.

Edward Snowden

#96. [The Center for Science in the Public Interest forced] PepsiCo to change the labeling of its Tropicana Peach Papaya Juice to reflect ... that it has neither peaches nor papaya and is not a juice.

Michael Moss

#97. He that will sell his fame will also sell the public interest.

Solon

#98. You see it even in our educational systems, where the market model becomes central. It's a matter of just gaining a skill or gaining access to a job to live in some vanilla suburb, as opposed to becoming a critical citizen concerned with public interest and common good.

Cornel West

#99. Allowing the U.S. government to intimidate its people with threats of retaliation for revealing wrongdoing is contrary to the public interest.

Edward Snowden

#100. There is no more effective public interest watchdog in Washington, D.C.

Bill Moyers