Public Good Quotes - Page 3

• Capitalism is based on individual rights - not on the sacrifice of the individual to the 'public good' of the collective.

  Ayn Rand

  Sacrifice, Rights, Individual

  Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, Robert Hessen (1986). “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”, p.191, Penguin

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• We need to start seeing privacy as a commons - as some kind of a public good that can get depleted as too many people treat it carelessly or abandon it too eagerly. What is privacy for? This question needs an urgent answer.

  Evgeny Morozov

  People, Needs, Answers

  "Author: Think twice about 'the Internet'". Interview with Todd Leopold, edition.cnn.com. July 19, 2013.

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• 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

  Government, Vices, Done

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• 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

  Political, Needs, Moral

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• The extraordinary genius of John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie 100 years ago was their recognition that the great wealth they had amassed could be put to public good and used to solve the complex problems for which there were no other sources of capital.

  Judith Rodin

  Years, John D Rockefeller, Genius

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• Churches are tax exempt because they are supposed to provide a public good. To prove that good to the IRS, churches arent supposed to hoard their money. They are supposed to spend it on goods and services for the faithful. Under this pretense, the church has made massive investments in tax free real estate all over the world. And when it comes to labor costs, they are almost free.

  Lawrence Wright

  Real, Faithful, Church

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• The Internet, too, has strong attributes of a public good, and has undermined the “private good” attributes of old media. Internet service providers obviously can exclude people, but the actual content -the values, the ideas- can be shared with no loss of value for the consumer. It is also extremely inexpensive and easy to share material. Sharing is built into the culture and practices of the Web and has made it difficult for the subscription model to be effective.

  Robert Waterman McChesney

  Strong, Loss, Media

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• Planners and designers should encourage as much diversity in human habitats as they find in animal habitats. It is not possible to resolve all conflicts or to gain all ends. Choices have to be made. Different aspects of the public good should be stressed in different places. To achieve variety in land use patterns, there should also be a variety of relationships between the professions, not an institutionalized decision-making tree. Relationships between the constructive professions should, therefore, be deconstructed.

  Tom Turner

  Animal, Land, Diversity

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• Knowledge should be a public good, and I want my ideas to have as much exposure as possible.

  Sheena Iyengar

  Ideas, Want, Should

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• Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.

  James Madison

  Party, Rights, Government

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (2015). “The Federalist Papers: A Collection of Essays Written in Favour of the New Constitution”, p.47, Coventry House Publishing

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• Higher education isn't just a personal investment. It's a public good that pays off in a more competitive workforce and better-informed and engaged citizens. Every year, we spend nearly $100 billion on corporate welfare, and more than $500 billion on defense spending. Surely ensuring the next generation can compete in the global economy is at least as important as subsidies for big business and military adventures around the globe. In fact, I think we can and must go further - not just making public higher education tuition-free, but reinventing education in America as we know it.

  Robert Reich

  Education, Military, Adventure

  "Ten Ideas to Save the Economy #5: How to Reinvent Education" by Robert Reich, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 21, 2015.

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• Life is a republic where the individuals are for the most part unconscious that while they are working for themselves they are also working for the public good.

  Francis Galton

  Republic, Life Is, Individual

  Sir Francis Galton (0101). “Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development”, p.83, Prabhat Prakashan

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• 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

  Thinking, Honor, Body

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

  Thomas a Kempis

  Reading, Writing, Laziness

  St. Augustine, Dr. Howard Taylor, Mrs. Howard Taylor, Apostolic Fathers, J. Oswald Sanders (2010). “Moody Classics Complete Set: Includes 19 Classics of the Faith in a Single Volume”, p.1550, Moody Publishers

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• The best defence [for a democracy, for the public good] is aggressiveness, the aggressiveness of the involved citizen. We need to reassert that slow, time-consuming, inefficient, boring process that requires our involvement; it is called 'being a citizen.' The public good is not something that you can see. It is not static. It is a process. It is the process by which democratic civilizations build themselves.

  John Ralston Saul

  Civilization, Democracy, Needs

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• Alliances are crucial to success in the political sphere. However, if we are to approach other organizations to propose alliances for the public good, we must be prepared to assert a far more important role for the library. We must clearly define what we do and establish and assert the relationship of libraries to basic democratic freedoms, to the fundamental humanistic principles that are central to our very way of life. . . .

  Arthur Curley

  Organization, Political, Democracy

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• Our civilization is locked in the grip of an ideology - corporatism. An ideology that denies and undermines the legitimacy of individuals as the citizen in a democracy. The particular imbalance of this ideology leads to a worship of self-interest and a denial of the public good. The practical effects on the individual are passivity and conformism in the areas that matter, and non-conformism in the areas that don't

  John Ralston Saul

  Self, Civilization, Democracy

  John Ralston Saul (2012). “The Unconscious Civilization”, p.186, Simon and Schuster

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• An over-scrupulous jealousy of danger to the rights of the people, which is more commonly the fault of the head than of the heart, will be represented as mere pretense and artifice, the stale bait for popularity at the expense of the public good.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Heart, Rights, People

  James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay (2016). “The Federalist Papers: The Making of the US Constitution”, p.19, Arcturus Publishing

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• 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

  Mean, Errors, People

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Quentin P. Taylor, John Jay (1998). “The Essential Federalist: A New Reading of the Federalist Papers”, p.135, Rowman & Littlefield

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• 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

  Patriotic, Government, People

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (2014). “The Federalist Papers”, p.143, Courier Corporation

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• The business of business should not be about money. It should be about responsibility. It should be about public good, not private greed

  Anita Roddick

  Responsibility, Greed, Should

  Anita Roddick, Cheryl Rickman (2005). “The Small Business Start-up Workbook: A step-by-step guide to starting the business you've dreamed of”, p.227, Hachette UK

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• 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

  Voice, People, Democracy

  "Federalist No. 10. The Same Subject Continued: The Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection" by James Madison, www.congress.gov. November 23, 1787.

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

  Abraham Lincoln

  Wise, Employment, Politics

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• I would jump down Etna for any public good - but I hate a mawkish popularity.

  John Keats

  Hate, Popularity, I Hate

  John Keats (2002). “Selected Letters”, p.80, Oxford University Press, USA

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

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Trust, Doctrine, Public Trust

  "Essay on Horace Walpole" by Thomas B. Macaulay, 1833.

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