Top 46 Public Virtue Quotes
#1. Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics.
John Adams
#2. When public virtue is gone, when the national spirit is fled the republic is lost in essence, though it may still exist in form
John Adams
#3. In evil times, when public virtue has left the earth, ancient writings are of little account, and no one cares to disturb the silence of the libraries.
Joseph-Arthur De Gobineau
#4. Voting is proof that gullibility has been certified as a public virtue.
ABifarelli
#5. An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery.
Joseph Pulitzer
#6. When was public virtue to be found when private was not?
William Cowper
#7. Watergate is the great liberal illusion that you can have public virtue without private morality.
Clare Boothe Luce
#8. When a people, having become free, establish wise laws, their revolution is complete ... Peace and prosperity, public virtue, victory, everything is in the vigor of the laws. Outside of the laws, everything is sterile and dead.
Louis Antoine De Saint-Just
#9. The view that honesty is something, and even a virtue, belongs, it is true, to those private opinions which are forbidden in this age of public opinions.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#10. Where the roots of private virtue are diseased, the fruit of public probity cannot but be corrupt.
Felix Adler
#11. Public symbols matter. They are one of the ways we tell each other, and the world, what we honor.
Michael W. McConnell
#12. Whatever is done without ostentation, and without the people being witnesses of it, is, in my opinion, most praiseworthy: not that the public eye should be entirely avoided, for good actions desire to be placed in the light; but notwithstanding this, the greatest theater for virtue is conscience.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
#13. The laws by which the Divine Ruler of the universe has decreed an indissoluble connection between public happiness and private virtue, whatever apparent exceptions may delude our short-sighted judgments, never fail to vindicate their supremacy and immutability.
William Cabell Rives
#14. The ages of greatest public spirit are not always eminent for private virtue.
David Hume
#15. Of how much importance is it, that the utmost pains be taken by the public to have the principles of virtue early inculcated on the minds even of children, and the moral sense kept alive.
Samuel Adams
#16. Every generous action loves the public view; yet no theatre for virtue is equal to a consciousness of it.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
#17. Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people, in order to betray them.
Joseph Story
#18. 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
#19. What are the maxims of Democracy? A strict observance of justice and public faith, and a steady adherence to virtue.
John Marshall
#20. I am and have always been a strong proponent of public education. But by the virtue of its very nature - publicly funded schools cannot offer the type of spiritual education that Catholic schools have long provided.
Mark Foley
#21. The virtues of your character is more important the public opinion.
Sunday Adelaja
#22. That punishment, the public punishment of disgrace, should in a just measure attend his share of the offence is, we know, not one of the barriers which society gives to virtue.
Jane Austen
#24. The measure of any man's virtue is what he would do, if he had neither the laws nor public opinion, nor even his own prejudices, to control him.
William Hazlitt
#25. At a time when pimpery, lick-spittlery, and picking the public's pocket are the order of the day - indeed, officially proclaimed as virtue - the poet must play the madcap to keep his balance. And ours.
Studs Terkel
#26. Simplicity is no longer presented as a virtue. The value of complex and difficult language has been preached with such insistence that the public has begun to believe the lack of clarity must be a sign of artistic talent.
John Ralston Saul
#27. There can be no public or private virtue unless the foundation of action is the practice of truth.
George Holyoake
#28. Virtue comes through contemplation of the divine, and the exercise of philosophy. But it also comes through public service. The one is incomplete without the other. Power without wisdom is tyranny; wisdom without power is pointless.
Iain Pears
#29. Though a hundred crooked paths may conduct to a temporary success, the one plain and straight path of public and private virtue can alone lead to a pure and lasting fame and the blessings of posterity.
Edward Everett
#30. In the long run, the public interest depends on private virtue.
James Q. Wilson
#31. 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
#32. I think with you, that nothing is of more importance for the public weal, than to form and train up youth in wisdom and virtue. Wise and good men are in my opinion, the strength of the state; more so than riches or arms.
Benjamin Franklin
#33. Modesty is a virtue that can never thrive in public.
John Adams
#34. The public still ultimately determines what happens to you politically, by virtue of the casting of their vote ... and you cannot ever predict what will move the public in one direction or another.
Willie Brown
#35. Common tyrants, and public oppressors, are not intitled to obedience from their subjects, by virtue of any thing here laid down by the inspired apostle.
Jonathan Mayhew
#36. Suspicion is a virtue as long its object is the preservation of public good
Patrick Henry
#37. Health, learning and virtue will ensure your happiness; they will give
you a quiet conscience, private esteem and public honour.
Thomas Jefferson
#38. Virtue is everywhere that which is thought praiseworthy; and nothing else but that which has the allowance of public esteem is called virtue.
John Locke
#39. Women who are harassed, at work, on the street, or even online, are subject to the same rigid purity standards as women who are sexually assaulted, Just by virtue of being out in public, we're overstepping certain boundaries.
Jessica Valenti
#40. I didn't get into acting to be a public service announcer or an advocate and yet, by virtue of this show and how we handle the subject matter that we've been given, that's kind of how it's evolved in certain ways.
Christopher Meloni
#41. There are few things more wearisome in a fairly fatiguing life than the monotonous repetition of a phrase which catches and holds the public fancy by virtue of its total lack of significance.
Agnes Repplier
#42. A minister who is much before the public has need to be thick skinned, and to exercise to a very high degree the virtue of longsuffering.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
#43. 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
#44. Being persuaded that a just application of the principles, on which the Masonic Fraternity is founded, must be promote of private virtue and public prosperity, I shall always be happy to advance the interests of the Society, and to be considered by them as a deserving brother.
George Washington
#45. I hold to the idea that civility, understood as the willingness to engage in public discourse, is the first virtue of citizens.
Mark Kingwell
#46. Virtue does not spring from riches, but riches and all other human blessings, both private and public, from virtue.
Plato
