Quotes About The Public Good

#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. 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

#17. 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

#18. [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

#19. 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

#20. 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

#21. The powers contained in a constitution ... ought to be construed liberally in advancement of the public good.

Alexander Hamilton

#22. 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

#23. All geniuses born women are lost to the public good.

Mary Pipher

#24. The task of government was not to stop selfish striving - a hopeless task - but to harness it for the public good.

Ron Chernow

#25. 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

#26. 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

#27. It is just observation that the people commonly intend the Public Good.

Alexander Hamilton

#28. 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

#29. The price of power is responsibility for the public good.

Bill Vaughan

#30. 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

#31. 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

#32. The noblest motive is the public good.

Virgil

#33. That man is the most loyal who aims at the noblest motive, and that motive the public good.

Virgil

#34. 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

#35. 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

#36. 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

#37. I wish to be useful, and every kind of service necessary to the public good becomes honorable by being necessary.

Nathan Hale

#38. Self-interest, be it enlightened, works indirectly for the public good.

William H. Prescott

#39. 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

#40. 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

#41. 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

#42. 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

#43. How can there ever possibly be a conflict between my private interests and the public good?

Ashleigh Brilliant

#44. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.

Adam Smith

#45. 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

#46. 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

#47. You can't serve the public good without the truth as a bottom line.

Carl Bernstein

#48. 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

#49. If I can't do something for the public good, what the hell am I doing?

Anita Roddick

#50. 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

#51. 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

#52. 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

#53. Honest statesmanship is the wise employment of individual meanness for the public good.

Abraham Lincoln

#54. 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

#55. The public good is in nothing more essentially interested, than in the protection of every individual's private rights.

William Blackstone

#56. 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

#57. 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

#58. 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

#59. That kind always has the public good as a motive to justify every abomination.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#60. 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

#61. 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

#62. 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

#63. 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

#64. 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

#65. The English doctrine that all power is a trust for the public good.

Thomas B. Macaulay

#66. 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

#67. 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

#68. 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

#69. Every great example of punishment has in it some injustice, but the suffering individual is compensated by the public good.

Tacitus

#70. 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

#71. It is the essence of responsibility to put the public good ahead of personal gain

Robert Kennedy

#72. 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

#73. 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

#74. 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

#75. A government ought to contain in itself every power requisite to the full accomplishment of the objects committed to its care, and to the complete execution of the trusts for which it is responsible, free from every other control but a regard to the public good and to the sense of the people.

Alexander Hamilton

#76. Politicians fascinate because they constitute such a paradox; they are an elite that accomplishes mediocrity for the public good.

George Will

#77. What's distinctively shocking about Machiavelli is that he didn't care. He believed not only that politicians must do evil in the name of the public good, but also that they shouldn't worry about it. He was unconcerned, in other words, with what modern thinkers call 'the problem of dirty hands.'

Michael Ignatieff

#78. 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

#79. 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

#80. Never be entirely idle; but either be reading, or writing, or praying, or meditating, or endeavoring something for the public good.

Thomas A Kempis

#81. Public education is a good foundation on which to build a better life for each of us. And if we want to prove to these children who never made the mess in the first place that education is worth the trouble, our schools have to inspire them so they can do what they ought to do.

Bill Cosby

#82. In the end, Ted Kennedy was a politician, plain and simple. Yet he embodied how politics and public service can be successfully intertwined. You can't be a good public servant without being a good politician. Kennedy was both.

Chuck Todd

#83. I get pressure from my audience and my agents to be a 'good girl,' and I'm in the public eye, so if I mess up, it's going to be all over the place.

Melissa Joan Hart

#84. It's so important to that we go into the public schools and we feed all of the kids something that is really good for them.

Alice Waters

#85. 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

#86. The public has heard the stereotypical love songs a million times, and they've heard the stereotypical life-or-death songs millions of times. It's good to mix it up a little bit.

Ed Sheeran

#87. Upon the principles of reason, the good of many is preferable to the good of a few or of one; a lasting good is to be preferred before a temporary, the public before the private.

Mary Astell

#88. Most satirists are indeed a public scourge; Their mildest physic is a farrier's purge; Their acrid temper turns, as soon as stirr'd, The milk of their good purpose all to curd. Their zeal begotten, as their works rehearse, By lean despair upon an empty purse.

William Cowper

#89. You become successful, the way I see it, only if you're good enough to deliver what the public enjoys. If you're not, you won't have any audience; so the performer really has more to do with his success than the public does.

Johnny Carson

#90. Yes," she thought, "nature is the refuge and home for women: they have no public career - no aim nor end beyond their domestic circle; but they can extend that, and make all the creations of nature their own, to foster and do good to.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#91. It's not from money that excellence comes, but from excellence money and the other things, all of them, come to be good for human beings, whether in private or in public life.

Plato

#92. Would you have her birched in the public square? Baited by dogs perhaps? Madam, we have destroyed her good name, and she will find the world a much colder and darker place as a result. Even now her father is probably changing her name to Buzzletrice.

Frances Hardinge

#93. Combining storytelling, humanity, and laughter will give you a huge advantage in your public speaking and the odds are good that you already have all the raw material you need.

David Nihill

#94. I just never have really been the kind of person that's out in public being inappropriate, I guess. I like to have fun as much as the next person but I tend to do it in private and just hang out with close friends. If I'm going to go out, I'll just do it with my really good friends.

Emma Roberts

#95. There is a cannibalism that's loose in our society in which public figures such as the Clintons could try to come into this town and do something good for this country and then they get hammered away even though they're trying to do the right thing.

David Gergen

#96. When you have police officers who abuse citizens, you erode public confidence in law enforcement. That makes the job of good police officers unsafe.

Mary Frances Berry

#97. I, who so love a hermit life for a good part of the day, find myself living in public, and almost losing my identity.

Elizabeth Blackwell

#98. Good advertising does not just circulate information. It penetrates the public mind with desires and belief.

Leo Burnett

#99. And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.

William Shakespeare

#100. And as to you, Sir, treacherous in private friendship and a hypocrite in public life, the world will be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate or an impostor; whether you have abandoned good principles, or whether you ever had any.

Thomas Paine