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Common Good Quotes

Browse 254 quotes about Common Good.

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Common Good Quotes

“Vanity and ambition as education. - So long as a man has not yet become an instrument of general human utility let him be plagued by ambition; if that goal has been attained, however, if he is working with the necessity of a machine for the good of all, then let him be visited by vanity; it will humanize him and make him more sociable, endurable and indulgent in small things, now that ambition (to render him useful) has finished roughhewing him.”

AmbitionIndividualityVanityUtilityCommon GoodCareer PathCycle Of Life
Book:Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits
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“This is the problem with the gig economy, I think as I squirm around in the trunk. Everyone is so vulnerable and the rules for what constitutes civilized behavior--well, they're coming apart so quickly I've decided those rules were illusions all along. We have stopped seeing each other as people, as fellow travelers on this dying earth; we just see a gig or an economy.... The system is designed to keep us so depleted that we forget our sense of decency and become so mercenary about our own survival that we have nothing left to contribute to the common good.”

WorkEmpathyVulnerabilityIsolationDecencyCommon GoodDepletionFreelancersContractorsGig Economy
Book:I Hold a Wolf by the Ears: Stories
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“Your anger – about matters that you think are personal and yours alone – is, in fact, the fuel for the machines of war. Your kindness towards strangers on the street is, in fact, the grace and serenity that brings millions of people together to work towards the common good of all.”

InspirationalWarWisdomSpiritualPeaceGrowthConsciousnessCompassionKindnessPsychologyGraceAngerUnityPersonal DevelopmentInner PeaceZenBlessingsCommon GoodPersonal
Book:Living Peace: Essential Teachings For Enriching Life
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“He who thinks that the working class can be assured, prosperity and freedom by organizing economic life on a militaristic basis is wrong. No less erroneous is it to strive for a dictatorship for the purpose of crushing the enemy and establishing the working class in a privileged position in the state and society while reducing the rest of the population to the position of pariahs as a means of ultimately establishing socialist equality for all. But most objectionable of all would be to attempt to build a regime of humanity upon the basis of brutality, seeing that without the former no true Socialist commonwealth can exist. For this commonwealth must represent the realization of the slogan of the French Revolution, which was “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.”

ViolenceHumanismSocialismNon ViolenceAuthoritarianismCommon Good
Book:Social Democracy Versus Communism
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“True democracy focuses on the public interest; it defends the common good and protects its citizens - especially the weak and the vulnerable. We maintain that no democracy can survive without the powerful notions of compassion and public service. The level of wealth inequality in this country has gotten so far out of hand, the quantity of compassion so diminished, that the very future of democracy is at stake." ― & Cornel West”

CompassionDemocracyInequalityCommon GoodPublic Interest
Book:The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto
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“If there is no God, then there is no freedom. And no democracy either.” Katrina paused and added, “The ancients made two serious mistakes. First, they put society above the soul of each human and moral principles. Second, they began to understand society as a biological population. The strongest and most aggressive scums inevitably ended up at the top. They decided what was ‘common good’, and everyone else was turned into slaves.”

GodPoliticsFreedomDemocracySocietyCommon Good
Book:The Outside Intervention
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“In the era of angry and aggressive policing, it is an honorable service to your fellow citizens to video record police officers interactions with the common people.”

PeopleFilmCommonCitizensPoliceAngryVideoServiceOfficersAggressiveHonorablePeople QuotesPolice BrutalityPolicemenPolice OfficerService To OthersCommon GoodCommon ManPolice CorruptionPolice StatePublicOfficerCitizenService To MankindAggressivenessPolicemanEraPolice ReformPolice ServiceRecordPolicingInteractionsRecordingInteractAngry PeopleCitizen PowerHonorable PersonAggressive BehaviorCitizens Of HumanityFellowFellow HumansFellow Beings
Author:Steven Magee
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“For what is socialism? With the frills removed, it is people collectively running society. Instead of being the prisoners of anarchic capitalist competition and the mad rush for profit at any cost, it is working together for the common good. Our tremendous co-operative power would be controlled, not by a ruling class in the search for ever greater profits, but democratically and for the fulfillment of human need.”

PoliticsProfitSocialismCommon GoodCapital
Book:Revolutionary Road to Socialism
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“The passage that he had found in the book had been riddled with ambiguities and contradictions only reserved for those most valiant in overriding their legalistic forbearance into a necessary frenzy that would allow them to suitably work up a case for one side or the other on how the Law, without the possibility of misinterpretation, states If ABC, then DEF—or for the sake of acknowledging the counterargument first as a courtroom tactic, the case might also be made that the Law states the antithesis of the aforementioned If ABC, then DEF, but gives allowance within reasonable parameters for a provisional XYZ to be granted in exceptional cases. And thus, it was a matter not so much of making one’s case in a clear and logical sense, but one for the lawyers to battle out in the arena of pathos, as it was clearly the emotional pleas that could evoke a sense of sympathy in the courtroom and overturn otherwise painstaking endeavors at using the tools at hand to make pleas based upon incontrovertible facts.”

Common GoodPathosMisinterpretationLaw And JusticeContradictionsMoral RelativismAshim ShankerAmbiguitiesIncontrovertibleHollow Systems Of JurisprudenceLegalistic Forbearance
Book:Don't Forget to Breathe
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“When men say, for instance (by a false metaphor), that each member of the public should feel himself an owner of public property – such as a Town Park – and should therefore respect it as his own, they are saying something which all our experience proves to be completely false. No man feels of public property that it is his own; no man will treat it with the care or the affection of a thing which is his own; still less can a man express himself through the use of a thing which is not his own, but shared in common with a mass of other men.”

PropertyPrivate PropertyProperty RightsCommon GoodCommon PropertyPublic Property
Book:An Essay on the Restoration of Property
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“Their quarry had been cornered in his defenses and their bloodlust was such that they were likely to pay top Julep to watch him escape, so that he might be brutalized and killed before their very eyes, as this was much more gratifying to them than simply watching justice be enacted. They, too, understood that societal constructs for justice were moderate gratification, at best, as they were empty and subject to contradictions and compromises steeped in moral relativism and an unconditional dependence upon overblown semantics that made the law a mockery of itself. As for the ideologies that these hollow systems of jurisprudence sought to define and uphold: these could easily be subjugated through a meticulous analysis of the trivial components of one statute or another. The rule of law had failed them. What the people wanted, in its stead, was rather simple: moral absolutes. Good versus evil. And evil was not to be simply prevailed over. Evil was to be dominated and effectively eliminated, because as long as it was able to while away the time somewhere—in some sweaty prison cell, far away, staring out the barred window with a wry smile, as it plotted its next offensive on the Common Good, a sense of wholeness could not be achieved.”

JusticePrisonGood And EvilBrutalityCommon GoodNatural LawContradictionsMoral RelativismQuarryJurisprudenceBloodlustCompromisesDualitiesHollow Systems Of JurisprudenceMoral AbsolutesOverblown SemanticsSocietal Contructs For JusticeSubjugation Of Law
Book:Don't Forget to Breathe
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“The more advanced the country, the more its citizens insist on a pure water supply, on laws against careless methods of preparing and handling food, and against the making and advertising of harmful drugs. Powerful vested interests with profits at stake compel the public authorities to fight a sustained battle against the assumption that the pursuit of individual profit is the best way to serve the general good.”

DecencyCommon Good
Book:In Place of Fear
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“I am 52 years old, and have spent truly the better part of my life out-of-doors but yesterday I heard a new sound above my head a rustling, ruffling quietness in the spring air and when I turned my face upward I saw a flock of blackbirds rounding a curve I didn't know was there and the sound was simply all those wings just feathers against air, against gravity and such a beautiful winning the whole flock taking a long, wide turn as if of one body and one mind. How do they do that? Oh if we lived only in human society with its cruelty and fear its apathy and exhaustion what a puny existence that would be but instead we live and move and have our being here, in this curving and soaring world so that when, every now and then, mercy and tenderness triumph in our lives and when, even more rarely, we manage to unite and move together toward a common good, and can think to ourselves: ah yes, this is how it's meant to be.”

HumanityNatureCommon Good
Author:Julie Cadwallader Staub
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“Modern civilization is a worn-out vesture: it is not a question of sewing on patches here and there, but of a total and substantial reformation, a trans-valuation of its cultural principles; since what is needed is a change to the primacy of quality over quantity, of work over money, of the human over technical means, of wisdom over science, of the common service of human beings instead of the covetousness of unlimited individual enrichment or a desire in the name of the State for unlimited power.”

PhilosophyChristianityTransformationCatholicismReformationCommon GoodSocial Ethics
Book:True Humanism
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“Over the years I have clashed with a number of people over differences, only to set aside disputes in favor of the common good; an ultimate goal that is far more important than how I "feel" about your stance on an issue. We can always rise above to get ahead. Never compromise your integrity, but put egos away to get results. There is value in this responsible adulting thing.”

InspirationalMotivationalEgoUnityAdulthoodCommon GoodDifferences Between People
Book:You Have a Superpower: Mindi Pi Meets Ava "Why Can't I Go Outside"
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“Ethics and effectiveness are not adversaries but allies. Ethically crafted policies consider long-term societal impacts, fostering sustainable solutions that address core issues. Aligning with Maqasid ensures policies not only achieve their goals but also nurture the common good.”

EthicsEffectivenessCommon GoodSustainable DevelopmentPoliciesMaqasid
Book:Heaven Is Under the Feet of Governments: Steering Nations With Maqasid
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“At its heart, civility is the disposition of those who understand that we live together to flourish together—that the wellbeing of our neighbor is bound to our own, and that we have a duty to one another and to the common good.”

CitizenshipCivilityWellbeingCommon GoodCivic DutyLiving TogetherServant LeadershipCivil DiscourseHuman FlourishingCivility Quotes
Book:Save Your City: How Toxic Culture Kills Community & What to Do About It
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“L'intérêt général doit primer sur l'intérêt particulier, le juste partage des richesses créées par le monde du travail primer sur le pouvoir de l'argent. La Résistance propose « une organisation rationnelle de l'économie assurant la subordination des intérêts particuliers à l'intérêt général et affranchie de la dictature professionnelle instaurée à l'image des États fascistes », et le Gouvernement provisoire de la République s'en fait le relais.”

Common GoodGeneral InterestIntérêt GénéralIntérêt ParticulierParticular Interest
Book:Indignez-vous !
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“What is the American radical? The radical is that unique person who actually believes what he says. He is that person to whom the common good is the greatest personal value. He is that person who genuinely and completely believes in mankind. The radical is so completely identified with mankind that he personally shares the pain, the injustices, and the sufferings of all his fellow men. For the radical the bell tolls unceasingly and every man’s struggle is his fight.”

AmericaHumanityEmpathyActivismCommon GoodAmericansActivistsRadicals
Book:Reveille for Radicals
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“Once upon a time there was a Queen who had a son so ugly and so misshapen that it was long disputed whether he had human form. A fairy who was at his birth said, however, that he would be very amiable for all that, since he would have uncommon good sense.”

HumansLongSaidWould BeFormSonBirthUglyQueensFairyGood SenseOnce Upon A TimeCommon GoodUncommonAmiableHuman Form
Book:Classic Fairy Tales: Fairy Stories Every Child Should Know
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“We live in the age of "Everything Has Rights." Now, I'm not denying that the concept of rights is valid, but I wonder whatever happened to obligations? One rarely hears the term anymore. Indeed, have you ever heard of a "human obligations movement?" The very ideal that holds a democracy together--the willingness to make personal sacrifice for the common good--is going quickly by the wayside.”

HumansAgeTogetherTermCommonResponsibilityWonderDemocracyRightsHappenedHeardSacrificeMovementConceptsIdealsObligationWillingnessCommon GoodPersonal Sacrifice
Author:John Rosemond
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“If we are to avoid that catastrophe [a nuclear World War III], a system of world order — preferably a system of world government — is mandatory. The proud nations someday will see the light and, for the common good and their own survival, yield up their precious sovereignty, just as America's thirteen colonies did two centuries ago. When we finally come to our senses and establish a world executive and parliament of nations, thanks to the Nuremburg precedent we will already have in place the fundamentals for the third branch of government, the judiciary.”

IfsWorldTwoWarLightGovernmentAmericaOrderNationsCommonCenturyProudSurvivalThirdsFundamentalsNuclearSensesThanksWar Of The WorldsBranchesSomedayExecutivesYieldWorld War IiWorld War ICatastropheSovereigntyParliamentColonyWorld OrderCommon GoodThirteenPrecedentJudiciaryWorld GovernmentBranches Of Government
Author:Walter Cronkite
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