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Public Interest Quotes

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Public Interest Quotes

“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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“James Ed’s statistics even made me feel guilty,” a businessman said. “Let’s make him a millionaire.”

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Book:James Ed Hoskins and the One-Room Schoolhouse: The Unprosecuted Crime Against Children
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“The issuing power [of money] should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”

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Author:Thomas Jefferson
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“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time - [...] when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”

PeopleFeelsChildrenHandsAmericaLostInterestAbilityDarknessIssuesAuthorityCriticalFeel GoodMy ChildrenAgendasFacultyDeclineSuperstitionsTechnologicalGrandchildrenSlidesCrystalsNoticingRepresentingConsultingPublic InterestForebodingHoroscopes
Author:Carl Sagan
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“The trouble is that privacy is at once essential to, and in tension with, both freedom and security. A cabinet minister who keeps his mistress in satin sheets at the French taxpayer's expense cannot justly object when the press exposes his misuse of public funds. Our freedom to scrutinise the conduct of public figures trumps that minister's claim to privacy. The question is: where and how do we draw the line between a genuine public interest and that which is merely what interests the public?”

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Author:Timothy Garton Ash
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“Why does a woman carry a gun? Because, under our system, every citizen has the latitude to act in the absence of police; the latitude to act reasonably, to act immediately, to act in defense of self, to act in defense of another, to act with lethal force, to act with her acquired training and to act not in anger but to respond in purpose. To exercise the protections of that latitude in public policy, public interest and practical safety, all that is demanded of her is that she act reasonably under the circumstances.”

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Author:John Longenecker
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“The dissemination of the individual's opinions on matters of public interest is for us, in the historic words of the Declaration of Independence, an 'unalienable right' that 'governments are instituted among men to secure.' History shows us that the Founders were not always convinced that unlimited discussion of public issues would be 'for the benefit of all of us' but that they firmly adhered to the proposition that the 'true liberty of the press' permitted 'every man to publish his opinion'.”

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Author:John Marshall Harlan II
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“What stands most explicitly as critique in Nietzsche's late work in not a development from earlier interests but a return to two problems of enduring personal involvement for him, those of Wagner and of Christianity. Der Antichrist , to take one case, is not a response to a resuscitating public interest in Christian religion; it is primarily a renewed attempt to resolve for himself the question of piety.”

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Author:John Carroll
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“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.”

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Author:Wright Patman
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“The Open Market Committee, as presently established, is plainly not in the public interest. This committee must be operated by purely public servants, representatives of the people as a whole and not any single interest group. The Open Market Committee should be abolished, and its powers transferred to the Federal Reserve Board - the present public members of the committee, with reasonably short terms of office.”

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Author:Wright Patman
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“If the Federal Reserve pursues a policy which Congress or the President believes not to be in the public interest, there is nothing Congress can do to reverse the policy. Nor is there anything the people can do. Such bastions of unaccountable power are undemocratic. The Federal Reserve System must be reformed, so that it is answerable to the elected representatives of the people.”

PeopleIfsBelievePoliticsPresidentInterestCan DoEconomyPolicyCongressPursueLiberalismRepresentativesReservesReverseFederal ReservePublic Interest
Author:Wright Patman
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“One answer to why public interest in men's tennis has been on the wane in recent years is an essential and unpretty thugishness about the power-baseline style that's become dominant on the tour. Watch Agassi closely sometime...he's amazingly absent of finesse, with movements that look more like a heavy-metal musician's than an athlete's...what a top PBer really resembles is film of the old Soviet Union putting down a rebellion. It's awesome, but brutally so, with a grinding, faceless quality about its power that renders that power curiously dull and empty.”

MenYearsLooksHas BeensFilmSportsInterestAnswersQualityWatchesStyleMovementEssentialsMusicianEmptyUnionsAthleteHeavyTennisDullRebellionSovietMetalsDominantSoviet UnionAbsentPublic InterestHeavy MetalFacelessFinesse
Author:David Foster Wallace
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“Democracy entails a correlation between the public interest as expressed by a majority of the population and the governmental policies that affect them. The term encompasses various manifestations, including direct, participatory and representative democracy, but Governments must be responsive to people and not to special interests such as the military-industrial complex, financial bankers and transnational corporations. Democracy is inclusive and does not privilege an anthropological aristocracy.”

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Author:Alfred-Maurice de Zayas
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“A free society depends upon a high degree of mutual trust. The public will not give that trust to officials who are not seen to be impartially dedicated to the general public interest, nor will they give trust to those high in government who violate the rule of law they ask citizens to obey at the expense of self-interest, or to those who present government as the place where one feathers his own nest, [or] exchanges favors with friends and former associates.”

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Author:Archibald Cox
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“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.”

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Book:The Duties of Women: A Course of Lectures
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“On two subjects the overwhelming majority of people regarded their own opinions as Absolute Truth, and sincerely believed that anyone who disagreed with them was immoral, outrageous, sinful, sacrilegious, offensive, intolerable, stupid, illogical, treasonable, actionable, against the public interest, ridiculous, and obscene. The two subjects were (of course) sex and religion.”

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Book:To Sail Beyond the Sunset
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“At the heart of the First Amendment is the recognition of the fundamental importance of the free flow of ideas and opinions on matters of public interest and concern. The freedom to speak one's mind is not only an aspect of individual liberty - and thus a good unto itself - but also is essential to the common quest for truth and the vitality of society as a whole. We have therefore been particularly vigilant to ensure that individual expressions of ideas remain free from governmentally imposed sanctions.”

MindFirstsHeartIdeasMatterWholeIndividualSpeakInterestCommonLibertyOpinionExpressionEssentialsConcernAspectFlowImportanceFundamentalsRecognitionAmendmentsQuestsFreedom Of SpeechVitalityFirst AmendmentSanctionsVigilantIndividual LibertyPublic InterestIndividual Expression
Author:William Rehnquist
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“The only thing that shocks me is public interest in people who shouldn't be interesting at all, like Jade Goody. We've gone past Andy Warhol and all those clever, arty and witty things that were done and said in the sixties...the fifteen minutes, and so on. Now your celebrities don't have to do anything, they're just voted in. And that shocks me.”

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Author:Marco Pirroni
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“Every individual necessarily labors to render the annual revenue of society as great as he can. He generally neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. He intends only his own gain, and he is, in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was not part of his intention.”

KnowsEndsHandsIndividualInterestLibertyCasesKnow HowEconomicGainsEconomicsLaborIntentionLibertarianInvisibleLibertarianismRevenueFree MarketPromotingAnnualsIndividual LibertyPublic InterestGreat LibertarianInvisible HandWealth Of Nations
Author:Adam Smith
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“Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics. There must be a positive passion for the public good, the public interest, honour, power and glory, established in the minds of the people, or there can be no republican government, nor any real liberty: and this public passion must be superiour to all private passions.”

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Book:Warren-Adams Letters: Being Chiefly a Correspondence Among John Adams, Samuel Adams, and James Warren ... 1743-1814
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“The role of campaign contributions in our political system and the role of lobbyists have now reached levels that are quite unhealthy for the operations of our democracy. But the antidote, as in past eras of lobbyist excess, is for more involvement by citizens to build pressure on members of the House and Senate to serve the public interest.”

PastPoliticalHouseInterestLevelsRolesDemocracyCitizensMembersPressureCampaignsErasOperationsContributionExcessSenateInvolvementAntidoteUnhealthyPolitical SystemsPublic InterestLobbyistsCampaign Contributions
Author:Al Gore
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“Once a term like "open source" entered our vocabulary, one could recast the whole public policy calculus in very different terms, so that instead of discussing the public interest, we are discussing the interests of individual software developers, while claiming that this is a discussion about "innovation" and "progress," not "accountability" or "security."”

DifferentWholeIndividualTermInterestProgressSecurityPolicySourceInnovationDiscussionAccountabilitySoftwareVocabularyDiscussingPublic PolicyCalculusDevelopersPublic InterestOpen Source
Author:Evgeny Morozov
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