Top 100 Public Quotes
#1. By [the] operations [of public improvement] new channels of communication will be opened between the States; the lines of separation will disappear, their interests will be identified, and their union cemented by new and indissoluble ties.
Thomas Jefferson
#2. So long as a man attends to his business the public does not count his drinks. When he fails they notice if he takes even a glass of root beer.
Corra May Harris
#3. The people we elect aren't bipartisan. The American public is bipartisan.
Lewis Black
#4. I had no idea if the photos [of Osama bin Laden's dead body] would ever be made public, and I didn't care.
Mark Owen
#5. You can't be in the public eye without making mistakes and having some regrets and having people analyze everything you do.
Sheryl Crow
#6. I was the Kate Moss of my day, atypical of what the public wanted, which was Brigitte Bardot. I was always tall, skinny and angular. But now, society has bought 55 years of my marketing 'Carmen,' and I'm considered beautiful. I hope that empowers older women.
Carmen Dell'Orefice
#7. If you look at the practice of 'crisis management,' and maybe squint at it a little, you can make out in the corners of your vision the ghosts or the vestiges of a much older, but still thoroughly American, form of public life, one centered not on public opinion but on religion.
Jonathan Dee
#8. I always thought Henry Kissinger was a disaster because he lies like most people breathe and you can't have that in public life.
Seymour Hersh
#9. I went to a local high school in Lancaster. Not much I can say about it; it was pretty much your typical public high school back in Pennsylvania.
Jonathan Groff
#10. You own a flamethrower?"
"Would you believe they're legal in this state? Would you believe there are instructions for building your own that you can just take out of the public library?
Joshua Lewis
#11. I wore a white velvet gown, similar to my Smolny dress. I looked forward to the day when I could wear any color in public other than white. White was innocent. My soul was not.
Robin Bridges
#13. Thus we work not in the light of public opinion but in the secrecy of the chamber; and perhaps the best of us are apt at times to forget the delicacies and sincerities which under these conditions are essential to harmony and honour.
Clifford Allbutt
#14. When I was sent to public school, I was relieved that I could wear what I wanted to wear.
Davey Havok
#15. Can nothing be done for freedom because the public conscience is inert?
William H. Seward
#16. With any group of people in life, sad things happen, and crazy things, and happy things. When you're in the public eye, it's just amplified, that's all.
Margot Kidder
#17. A university anywhere can aim no higher than to be as British as possible for the sake of the undergraduates, as German as possible for the sake of the public at large-and as confused as possible for the preservation of the whole uneasy balance.
Clark Kerr
#18. There is already huge public interest in stage musicals.
Tim Rice
#19. In fact, after having abolished the monarchy, the best of all governments, [the French Revolution] had transferred all the public power to the people - the people ... ever easy to deceive and to lead into every excess
Pope Pius VI
#20. The bell of public opinion is today making the Morgan-Rockefeller-Vanderbilt class jump. Nor are the strongest of our corporations immune. The railroads have had to jump pretty lively, and certain gigantic industrial combinations are also being put through their paces.
B.C. Forbes
#21. The drama of the essay is the way the public life intersects with my personal and private life. It's in that intersection that I find the energy of the essay.
Richard Rodriguez
#22. I have zero desire, just so you know, to be in the limelight. I don't think it's good for the country to have a former president criticize his successor. You're not going to see me giving my opinions in the public arena, until I start selling my book. I'm going to emerge then submerge.
George W. Bush
#23. Jail is more commonly-suited to those less-commonly able to finance a defense (or to potentially pander the prosecution). The choices for council is either a retained lawyer or, by default, a public defender. In the later of these two, the common title in jail was 'public pretender'.
H. Kirk Rainer
#24. Being able to read well in public and talk about your work in an engaging fashion is part of most writers' job specification.
Sara Sheridan
#25. As parents, we need to send our kids back to 'old-fashioned' outdoor summer camps, which have been on the decline as the demand for sports and academics-based camps has risen. We need to fight budget cuts to public parks programs and resist closures of public swimming pools and playgrounds.
Darell Hammond
#26. If active or concerned citizens forfeit politics, they thereby abandon their society to its most mediocre and venal public servants
Tony Judt
#27. War, we have come to believe, is a spectator sport. The military and the press have turned war into a vast video arcade game. Its very essence-death-is hidden from public view.
Chris Hedges
#28. A man looks pretty small at a wedding, George. All those good women standing shoulder to shoulder, making sure that the knot's tied in a mighty public way.
Thornton Wilder
#29. To the general public, show business may just mean the artistic part, but the dollar and cents element is the reality every performer has to face.
Liza Minnelli
#30. I'm wary of the word glam because I think that became the all-inclusive term with for any bloke with lipstick on, which is fine, you know, and that's what it is when it comes down to the public level.
David Bowie
#31. Opinions are formed in a process of open discussion and public debate, and where no opportunity for the forming of opinions exists, there may be moods -moods of the masses and moods of individuals, the latter no less fickle and unreliable than the former -but no opinion.
Hannah Arendt
#32. The Christian community has a golden opportunity to train an army of dedicated teachers who can invade the public school classrooms and use them to influence the nation for Christ.
D. James Kennedy
#34. What celebrities are useful for is bringing attention to the public and making them more aware. They can be unbelievably effective.
Diane Keaton
#35. All decisions in the criminal justice system must be determined by the physical and scientific evidence, and the credible testimony corroborated by that evidence, not in response to public outcry.
Robert P. McCulloch
#36. The Clintons are perhaps the most politically sophisticated public figures of their generation. They know how things work in the corridors of power and around the world; they know that foreign governments are trying to
Peter Schweizer
#37. No man ever freely surrendered a portion of his own liberty for the sake of the public good; such a chimera appears only in fiction. If it were possible, we would each prefer that the pacts binding others did not bind us; every man sees himself as the centre of all the world's affairs.
Cesare Beccaria
#38. The cloven-foot of self-interest was now and then to be seen aneath the robe of public principle.
John Galt
#39. The politicians think that I have not included enough of them; the nonpoliticians think that I have gone back to the old ways; and the mass public groups think I have forgotten them.
Corazon Aquino
#40. I like having a private name and a public name. It helps keep things straight.
S.E. Hinton
#41. When you strategize a relationship too much, like, "We're not gonna be public about it, and we're gonna say this in interviews," when you think it all out, I think that complicates the relationship and I think that's unfair for the relationship.
Taylor Swift
#42. Control the public's perception of you and nobody will care if you have any talent.
Rashida Jones
#43. If the public safety be provided, liberty and propriety secured, justice administered, virtue encouraged, vice suppressed, and the true interest of the nation advanced, the ends of government are accomplished ...
Algernon Sidney
#44. In essence, I see the value of journalism as resting in a twofold mission: informing the public of accurate and vital information, and its unique ability to provide a truly adversarial check on those in power.
Glenn Greenwald
#45. Whenever one feels like saying "the money that billionaire spent on his fleet of yachts could have been used better by the "public sector"", one should ask oneself when was the last time one heard of a billionaire buying an army of tanks and a set of nuclear weapons.
Jakub Bozydar Wisniewski
#46. One theme of what I've been writing has been to get people to understand that "apolitical" means "you lose." It doesn't mean you live a utopian life free of politicians' influence. The destruction of the public domain is the clearest example, but it will only be the first.
Lawrence Lessig
#47. On the sidewalks everyone holding either a giant coffee or a cell phone, as though a law had been declared against public displays of empty-handedness.
Andrew Pyper
#48. A sceptic finds Dallas absurd. A cynic thinks the public doesn't
Clive James
#49. Prison is the only form of public housing that the government has truly invested in over the past 5 decades
Marc Lamont Hill
#50. Like any family, like any group - the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, EPMD, Public Enemy - they've had bumps in the road. I just think that because A Tribe Called Quest is so precious to fans, they were concerned about unveiling some of those things.
Michael Rapaport
#51. If it's a situation in which the public is being given access, you can't discriminate against the media and say, as a general matter, that the media don't have access, because their access rights, of course, correspond with those of the public.
John Roberts
#52. The chief internal enemies of any state are those public officials who betray the trust imposed upon them by the people.
Dalton Trumbo
#53. Really, though, I just want to make the kind of comics I wouldn't be embarrassed to read in public.
Jamie McKelvie
#54. I like thinking of myself as invisible. I find it a very advantageous way to live. Unfortunately, its not the way the music business works. If you don't create some kind of public image, it gets created for you.
Tom Verlaine
#55. As a serial entrepreneur, angel investor and public company CEO, nothing irks me more than when a startup founder talks about wanting to cash in with an initial public offering.
Jay Samit
#56. Competence in heterosexuality, or at least the appearance or pretense of such competence, is as much a public affair as a privateone. Thus, going steady is a high school diploma in heterosexuality; engagement a BA; marriage an MA; and children a Ph.D.
Thomas Szasz
#57. The liberal paradigm of regulation and license has led to a society where an 18-year-old girl has the right to public fornication in a pornographic movie
but only if she is paid the minimum wage.
Irving Kristol
#58. I want to do things in my community, get out of the public eye, just be normal. You get your 15 minutes of fame, I hear, and I've had 14. The clock's ticking.
Tim Howard
#59. If opportunity knocks, let it in. But with the way things are nowadays-I'd rather meet opportunity somewhere that's more public. I could meet opportunity in a coffee shop, but what if it works there? Well, I could suggest my grandma's basement.
-James Lee Schmidt and Jarod Kintz
James Lee Schmidt
#60. I am gratified on a regular basis by the people I meet all across the country who dedicate their efforts to protecting the environment and public health and are making a difference. The great thing about working on important issues is all of the other people you meet doing the same thing.
Laurie David
#61. If they [women] are to be integrated more fully into our society than has been the case so far, changes in individual attitudes of both men and women, adjustments in the labor market, and action by public authorities, will all be necessary.
Alva Myrdal
#62. Our legislation addresses broadcasts over the public airwaves, but I hope the cable and satellite industries see the importance of this issue and voluntarily create a family tier of programming and offer culturally responsible products.
Charles W. Pickering
#63. Cosmopolitanism has offered me an ethical perspective and a conceptual framework with which to read the signs of our times as a theologian and intellectual who has a public responsibility for constantly offering a way to engage in this rapidly changing public world.
Namsoon Kang
#64. The European generally submits to a public officer because he represents a superior force; but to an American he represents a right. In America it may be said that no one renders obedience to man, but to justice and to law.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#65. It was in the 1960s that I began the detailed study of public regulation.
George Stigler
#66. It is not necessary for the public to know whether I am joking or whether I am serious, just as it is not necessary for me to know it myself.
Salvador Dali
#67. Flamethrowers have been used by many armies in many wars, including by American Marines in Korea and Vietnam. They cause horrific deaths and are thus a serious public-relations liability. The U.S. military apparently phased them out in 1978.
Rachel Kushner
#68. Most people have seen worse things in private than they pretend to be shocked at in public.
E.W. Howe
#69. I have no other view than to promote the public good, and am unambitious of honors not founded in the approbation of my Country.
George Washington
#70. Being an actor is such a humiliating experience because you are selling yourself to the public, your face, your personality, and that is humiliating. As you get older, it becomes more humiliating because you've got less to sell.
Katharine Hepburn
#71. When experts and the public disagree on their priorities, he says, Each side must respect the insights and intelligence of the other.
Daniel Kahneman
#72. Failure to recognize learning styles in public schools has promoted a standard lecture format for teaching, which has frustrated the learning of many.
Rick Blackwood
#73. I try to preserve whatever balance society has between public and personal life. I never try to eat on the subway. I never try to listen to loud music on the subway.
Alex Karpovsky
#74. I've been so blessed to be part of a family that has dedicated its life to public service.
Jeb Bush
#75. The Ten Commandments are the most visible symbol because these commandments are recognized by Christians and Jews alike as being the foundation of our system of public morality.
Pat Robertson
#76. We just ask the agency to make reasonable and honest decisions, and the public deserves no less.
Fred Thompson
#77. Public life in this country is too damn dominated by people who'd read more if only their lips didn't get so tired.
Markham Shaw Pyle
#78. For future Snowdens, we want to show there is an organization that will do what we did for Snowden - as much as possible - in raising money for legal defense and public advocacy for whistleblowers so they know if they come forward there is a support group for them.
Sarah Harrison
#79. Mass ought to be in Latin, unless you could do it in Greek or Chinese. In fact, any abracadabra that no bloody member of the public or half-educated ape of a clargimint could think he understood.
Ezra Pound
#81. I see myself as a social conservative, but I think that there are lots of social institutions that produce beneficial reforms, like public hospitals, for instance, and schools.
Tony Abbott
#82. Thank you to everybody who voted for me, and to the British public for their encouragement over the last 17 years
Christopher Eccleston
#83. I think I'll always be a better playwright than a pundit, but I believe that writers should be public intellectuals and that theater, even more than film, is a place of public debate.
Tony Kushner
#84. Public school was never in business to produce Thoreau. It is in business to produce a man like Richard Nixon and, even more, a population like the one which could elect him.
Jonathan Kozol
#85. If you're in the movie or in television, your failures are very public, and so are your successes. You weigh them up against each other, really.
Julian Fellowes
#86. Government spending cannot create additional jobs. If the government provides the funds required (think stimulus) by taxing the citizens or by borrowing from the public, it abolishes on the one hand as many jobs as it creates on the other.
Ludwig Von Mises
#87. The public wants elected officials who have character. The public wants elected officials who are willing to stand up and say things, even if they don't agree with them.
Michael Bloomberg
#89. Public relations is at best promotion or manipulation, at worst evasion and outright deception. What it is never about is a free flow of information.
Heather Brooke
#90. I had several teachers who inspired me, in both the public school system and the Upward Bound program. I needed several, because I lived in such abject poverty and dysfunction. And they're still in my life today, because I consider them to be friends, actually.
Viola Davis
#91. I keep kind of making certain mistakes in public appearances over and over again.
Katherine Heigl
#92. It's almost seems as though there's a battle going on between the public and all the fast-food establishments, and, believe me, I think it's very tasty food.
Regis Philbin
#93. One of the beautiful things about podcasting is that I'm not beholding to some public entity.
Bryan Callen
#94. Personal trials are the great equalizer that continues to draw public fascination.
Alana Stewart
#95. The trail of lime trees outside our building is still a public loo. ... where else are they supposed to go to the toilet in a city where public toilets are about as common as UFO sightings? (pp.281-82)
Sarah Turnbull
#96. When a partner isolates their spouse from friends, associates, and public places, it's called domestic abuse. When it's done to an entire gender, it's called feminism.
Helen Smith
#97. This is a book about getting naked - not physically, but spiritually. It's about stripping away the symbols and status of public religion - the Sunday-dress version people often call "organized religion." And it's about attending to the well-being of the soul clothed only in naked human skin.
Brian D. McLaren
#98. except for military lawyers and legal aid/public defenders, who reported the highest job satisfaction.106
Susan Swaim Daicoff
#99. Men of great parts are often unfortunate in the management of public business, because they are apt to go out of the common road by the quickness of their imagination.
Jonathan Swift
#100. Some might say that one's faith is a private matter and should not be spoken of so publicly. They might assert this in public, but what do they really think in their hearts? The fact is, those who say such things usually don't even have a concern for faith in the privacy of their interior lives.
William Wilberforce
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