Quotes about public

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Interview in Penthouse (June 1983)
Context: Scientology has always had a "fair-game doctrine"—a policy of doing absolutely anything to stop an investigation or publication of a critical article in a magazine or newspaper. They have run some incredible operations on the several people who have tried to write books about Scientology. It was almost like a terror campaign. First they'd try throwing every possible lawsuit at the reporter or newspaper. We had a team of attorneys to do just that. The goal was to destroy the enemy. So the solution was always to attack, full-bore, with every possible resource, from every angle, instantaneously it can certainly be overwhelming. A guy would get slapped with twenty-seven lawsuits, and our lawyers would start depositioning absolutely anybody who ever knew the man, digging up dirt while at the same time putting together an operation that would get him into further trouble.

As quoted in New Musical Express ( May 1957), also in NME Rock 'N' Roll Years (1992) by John Tobler, p. 40
Context: The sham engineers of the music industry, who steer the wheels of public opinion, are driving the good features of calypso into the ground. I shudder to think what these greedy men will eventually do to this true art form.

Source: The Reader Over Your Shoulder (1943), Ch.4: "The Use and Abuse of Official English"
Context: The chief trouble with the official style is that it spreads far beyond the formal contexts to which it is suited. Most civil servants, having learned to write in this way, cannot throw off the habit. The obscurity of their public announcements largely accounts for the disrepute into which Departmental activities have fallen: for the public naturally supposes that Departments are as muddled and stodgy as their announcements.
The habit of obscurity is partly caused by a settled disinclination among public servants to give a definite refusal even where assent is out of the question; or to convey a vigorous rebuke even where, in private correspondence, any person with self-respect would feel bound to do so. The mood is conveyed by a polite and emasculated style — polite because, when writing to a member of the public, the public servant is, in theory at least, addressing one of his collective employers; emasculated because, as a cog in the Government machine, he must make his phrases look as mechanical as possible by stripping them of all personal feeling and opinion.

Farewell to Hollywood's Great White House Romance (2016)
Context: Nancy Reagan became first lady during the height of the feminist movement, and women who were battling for their rights in a male-dominated world saw her as an anachronism. Reagan said her life began when she met her husband. The adoring look she focused on her Ronnie when they were in public became known as "the gaze," adding to the caricature of her as a rich Hollywood socialite who did not understand the concerns of a generation of women coming into their own as professionals and seeking equality.
What her detractors failed to understand (and I was among them) was the substantive role she played behind the scenes at the White House in keeping her husband's presidency on track. She took the long view in looking after his legacy, intervening through favored surrogates to keep conservative ideologues from driving the agenda. Her insistence that no president could be considered great without reaching out to Soviet leaders trumped resistance from the right wing of the GOP.
She was fiercely protective of her husband's image, less so of her own, and she paid the price. When some of her interventions became known, particularly in the personnel department, she was cast as Lady Macbeth — even though the firings she engineered won praise. … Years later, with the benefit of hindsight and after watching Hillary Clinton's failed effort to achieve health-care reform, I came to believe Nancy Reagan deserved a fairer assessment. I wrote an op-ed piece that appeared in The Washington Post on Jan. 8, 1995, with the headline "Nancy with the centrist face: Derided as an elitist, Mrs. Reagan's impact was unequaled." I made the point that unlike Clinton, who took an office in the West Wing and was upfront about wanting to be a player, Reagan operated undercover, usually through a surrogate, and that she was a force for good. She rarely left fingerprints, but she got the job done, and her job was to play up her husband's strengths and cover for his weaknesses. She did both very well.
The piece concluded with this line: "She is without doubt an effective First Lady, and she may yet win our hearts." Soon after I received a handwritten note from Mrs. Reagan saying, "I don't really know how to say this but when something very nice comes from an unexpected source, it's really appreciated — and if you see me in a different light now, I'm happy. I can only hope one day 'to win the heart.' " Later that same year, she cooperated with a NEWSWEEK cover about her reconciliation with daughter Patti Davis, and how the president's Alzheimer's disease had brought the family together after literally decades of turmoil. Another handwritten note arrived shortly after with the lighthearted comment, "We've got to stop meeting like this!" After sharing her thoughts and emotions on her family's difficult times, Reagan said, "Hopefully I'm close to 'winning the heart.' "
In looking back at these notes, I realize how much it meant to her to gain a measure of affection after being treated so harshly in the public eye.

The History of Freedom in Christianity (1877)
Context: Machiavelli's teaching would hardly have stood the test of parliamentary government, for public discussion demands at least the profession of good faith. But it gave an immense impulse to absolutism by silencing the consciences of very religious kings, and made the good and the bad very much alike.

U.S. Supreme Court rationale for sterilizing the "unfit." Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200, 207 (1927) (endorsing Virginia's eugenics program).
1920s
Context: We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.... Three generations of imbeciles are enough.

As quoted in The Times (11 July 2003)
Context: I know that in my public life I fell below the standards that I had set myself... I have seen what is wrong but not done enough to put it right. I have been more critical than correct. I have had opportunities of great positions in the service of the state, but I have put them aside. I know that I have not devoted myself enough to promoting the good of others.

Speech in parliament (19 October 1675) http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=40374.
Context: The King governs by Law. Let us look back to the evils we had, in order to prevent more. There was loan, and ship-money, and extremes begat extremes. The House would then give no money. Let the King rely upon the Parliament; we have settled the Crown and the Government. 'Tis strange that we have sat so many years, and given so much money, and are still called upon for Supply. The Lords may give Supply with their own money, but we give the peoples; we are their proxies. The King takes his measures by the Parliament, and he doubts not but that all the Commons will supply for the Government; but giving at this rate that we have done, we shall be "a branch of the revenue." They will "anticipate" us too. But, let the officers say what they will, we will not make these mismanagements the King's error. 'Tis better it should fall upon us than the King. We give public money, and must see that it goes to public use. Tell your money, fix it to public ends, and take order against occasions of this nature for the future. We cannot live at the expence of Spain, that has the Indies; or France, who has so many millions of revenue. Let us look to our Government, Fleet, and Trade. 'Tis the advice that the oldest Parliament-man among you can give you; and so, God bless you!

Dream Days (1898), The Reluctant Dragon
Context: The most modest and retiring dragon in the world, if he's as big as four cart-horses and covered with blue scales, cannot keep altogether out of the public view. And so in the village tavern of nights the fact that a real live dragon sat brooding in the cave on the Downs was naturally a subject for talk.

1960, Speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association
Context: I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish — where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source — where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials — and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all. For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew — or a Quaker — or a Unitarian — or a Baptist. It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim- -but tomorrow it may be you — until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.

Source: The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863), Ch.21, p. 407-409
Context: The anonymous author of 'The Vestiges of Creation' published in 1844 a treatise, written in a clear and attractive style, which made the English public familiar with the leading views of Lamarck on transmutation and progression but brought no new facts or original line of argument to support those views, or to combat the principal objections which the scientific world entertained against them. No decided step in this direction was made until the publication in 1858 of two papers, one by Mr. Darwin and another by Mr. Wallace, followed in 1859 by Mr Darwin's celebrated work on 'The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection; or, the Preservation of favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.'... both writers begin by applying to the animal and vegetable worlds the Malthusian doctrine of population, or its tendency to increase in a geometrical ratio, while food can only be made to augment even locally in an arithmetical one. There being, therefore, no room or means of subsistence for a large proportion of the plants and animals which are born into the world, a great number must annually perish.

1860s, 1864, Letter to the City of Atlanta (September 1864)
Context: You have heretofore read public sentiment in your newspapers, that live by falsehood and excitement; and the quicker you seek for truth in other quarters, the better. I repeat then that, by the original compact of government, the United States had certain rights in Georgia, which have never been relinquished and never will be; that the South began the war by seizing forts, arsenals, mints, custom-houses, etc., etc., long before Mr. Lincoln was installed, and before the South had one jot or tittle of provocation. I myself have seen in Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi, hundreds and thousands of women and children fleeing from your armies and desperadoes, hungry and with bleeding feet. In Memphis, Vicksburg, and Mississippi, we fed thousands and thousands of the families of rebel soldiers left on our hands, and whom we could not see starve. Now that war comes to you, you feel very different. You deprecate its horrors, but did not feel them when you sent car-loads of soldiers and ammunition, and moulded shells and shot, to carry war into Kentucky and Tennessee, to desolate the homes of hundreds and thousands of good people who only asked to live in peace at their old homes, and under the Government of their inheritance. But these comparisons are idle. I want peace, and believe it can only be reached through union and war, and I will ever conduct war with a view to perfect an early success.

"The Brooklyn Divines." Brooklyn Union (Brooklyn, NY), 1883.
Context: Another thing is the magnificence of the churches. The church depends absolutely upon the rich. Poor people feel out of place in such magnificent buildings. They drop into the nearest seat; like poor relations, they sit on the extreme edge of the chair. At the table of Christ they are below the salt. They are constantly humiliated. When subscriptions are asked for they feel ashamed to have their mite compared with the thousands given by the millionaire. The pennies feel ashamed to mingle with the silver in the contribution plate. The result is that most of them avoid the church. It costs too much to worship God in public. Good clothes are necessary, fashionably cut.

Also quoted in "Warrior for Peace" by David Talbot, in TIME (2 July 2007), p. 50 http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1635958_1635999_1634954-6,00.html
1961, Address at the University of Washington
Context: We increase our arms at a heavy cost, primarily to make certain that we will not have to use them. We must face up to the chance of war, if we are to maintain the peace. We must work with certain countries lacking in freedom in order to strengthen the cause of freedom. We find some who call themselves neutral who are our friends and sympathetic to us, and others who call themselves neutral who are unremittingly hostile to us. And as the most powerful defender of freedom on earth, we find ourselves unable to escape the responsibilities of freedom, and yet unable to exercise it without restraints imposed by the very freedoms we seek to protect. We cannot, as a free nation, compete with our adversaries in tactics of terror, assassination, false promises, counterfeit mobs and crises. We cannot, under the scrutiny of a free press and public, tell different stories to different audiences, foreign and domestic, friendly and hostile. We cannot abandon the slow processes of consulting with our allies to match the swift expediencies of those who merely dictate to their satellites. We can neither abandon nor control the international organization in which we now cast less than 1 percent of the vote in the General Assembly. We possess weapons of tremendous power — but they are least effective in combating the weapons most often used by freedom's foes: subversion, infiltration, guerrilla warfare, civil disorder. We send arms to other peoples — just as we send them the ideals of democracy in which we believe — but we cannot send them the will to use those arms or to abide by those ideals. And while we believe not only in the force of arms but in the force of right and reason, we have learned that reason does not always appeal to unreasonable men — that it is not always true that "a soft answer turneth away wrath" — and that right does not always make might. In short, we must face problems which do not lend themselves to easy or quick or permanent solutions. And we must face the fact that the United States is neither omnipotent or omniscient — that we are only 6 percent of the world's population — that we cannot impose our will upon the other 94 percent of mankind — that we cannot right every wrong or reverse each adversity — and that therefore there cannot be an American solution to every world problem.

Poppin (1969)
Context: We can only take it so far, because man can only take it so far, lower self can only take it so far, and you have to realize that the public is only at a certain place. We won't see the day when the public accepts what we wanna project, even though they are accepting a lot now. By the time they're accepting it, maybe they'll be too old.... If it's total freedom, I guess the ultimate thing you can go into is total silence between the audience and performer, with the performer projecting something he doesn't even have to play. A total silence trip is the ultimate.... We do antagonize them psychologically. People look at us and react. They either go "Wow! Hey-hey-hey, baby!" and we say that's great. They're reacting and that's wonderful. It's better than them sitting there doing nothing. I say make them react — do whatever's in your power to move the audience, and if that's where it is, and there where it is with America, sex and violence, then I say project it.

Ch. 1 Marchamont Nedham : The Right Constitution of a Commonwealth Examined http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/print_documents/v1ch16s15.html <!-- The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States vol. VI (1851) p. 9 -->
1780s, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government (1787)
Context: The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If "Thou shall not covet," and "Thou shall not steal," are not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free.

Research by the Business Itself (1945)
Context: I believe it is pretty well established now that neither the intuition of the sales manager nor even the first reaction of the public is a reliable measure of the value of a product to the consumer. Very often the best way to find out whether something is worth making is to make it, distribute it, and then to see, after the product has been around a few years, whether it was worth the trouble. <!-- p. 83

Source: Interview (4 November 1994) quoted in Backlash Global Subversion of the Environmental Movement (1996), p. 51
Context: You can go to any major history and see the effect of unregulation. The very point of developing regulation around industrial society was that they were not only exploiting the workers to death they were befouling the planet, so regulation came because of that. What the right wing wants is for the public to have this role in the societal debate over balance of these issues and no power. The public power to confront these errors of industry is government regulation.

Dylan Thomas and Hector Berlioz (1956).
Context: Genius is unquestionably a great trial, when it takes the romantic form, and genius and romance are so associated in the public mind that many people recognize no other kind. There are other forms of genius, of course, and though they create their own problems, they are not "impossible" people. But O, how deeply we should thank God for these impossible people like Berlioz and Dylan Thomas! What a weary, grey, well-ordered, polite, unendurable hell this would be without them!

Joseph Fourier, p. 408.
Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men (1859)
Context: The ancients had a taste, let us say rather a passion, for the marvellous, which caused them to forget even the sacred duties of gratitude. Observe them, for example, grouping together the lofty deeds of a great number of heroes, whose names they have not even deigned to preserve, and investing the single personage of Hercules with them. The lapse of ages has not rendered us wiser in this respect. In our own time the public delight in blending fable with history. In every career of life, in the pursuit of science especially, they enjoy a pleasure in creating Herculeses.

interview on WBAI, January 1992 http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/interviews/9201-propaganda.html.
Quotes 1990s, 1990-1994
Context: The point of public relations slogans like "Support Our Troops" is that they don't mean anything... that's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody is going to be against and I suppose everybody will be for, because nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything. But its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something, do you support our policy? And that's the one you're not allowed to talk about.

A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Müller Written by Himself, First Part.
First Part of Narrative

remarks (2 May 1956) at a Caltech YMCA lunch forum http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/49/2/Religion.htm
Context: In this age of specialization men who thoroughly know one field are often incompetent to discuss another. The great problems of the relations between one and another aspect of human activity have for this reason been discussed less and less in public. When we look at the past great debates on these subjects we feel jealous of those times, for we should have liked the excitement of such argument. The old problems, such as the relation of science and religion, are still with us, and I believe present as difficult dilemmas as ever, but they are not often publicly discussed because of the limitations of specialization.

Source: Seven Great Statesmen in the Warfare of Humanity with Unreason (1915), p. 170-171
Context: Turgot's attempt... showed how the results that had followed Law's issues of paper money must follow all such issues. As regards currency inflation, Turgot saw that the issue of paper money beyond the point where it is convertible into coin is the beginning of disaster—that a standard of value must have value, just as a standard of length must have length, or a standard of capacity, capacity, or a standard of weight, weight. He showed that if a larger amount of the circulating medium is issued than is called for by the business of the country, it will begin to be discredited, and that paper, if its issue be not controlled by its relation to some real standard of value, inevitably depreciates no matter what stamp it bears. Turgot developed his argument [on currency inflation] with a depth, strength, clearness, and breadth, which have amazed every dispassionate reader from that day to this. It still remains one of the best presentations of this subject ever made; and what adds to our wonder is that it was not the result of a study of authorities, but was worked out wholly from his own observation and thought. Up to this time there were no authorities and no received doctrine on the subject; there were simply records of financial practice more or less vicious; it was reserved for this young student, in a letter not intended for publication, to lay down for the first time the great law in which the modern world, after all its puzzling and costly experiences, has found safety.

Source: Everybody’s Autobiography (1937), Ch. 2
Context: It always did bother me that the American public were more interested in me than in my work. And after all there is no sense in it because if it were not for my work they would not be interested in me so why should they not be more interested in my work than in me. That is one of the things one has to worry about in America.

Religious Belief and Public Morality (1984)
Context: Almost all Americans accept some religious values as a part of our public life. We are a religious people, many of us descended from ancestors who came here expressly to live their religious faith free from coercion or repression. But we are also a people of many religions, with no established church, who hold different beliefs on many matters.
Our public morality, then — the moral standards we maintain for everyone, not just the ones we insist on in our private lives — depends on a consensus view of right and wrong. The values derived from religious belief will not — and should not — be accepted as part of the public morality unless they are shared by the pluralistic community at large, by consensus.
That those values happen to be religious values does not deny them acceptability as a part of this consensus. But it does not require their acceptability, either.

Letter (1820), quoted in "The Red Harlot of Liberty: The Rise and Fall of Frances Wright" by Kimberly Nichols in Newtopia Magazine (15 May 2013)
Context: Is not an hereditary nobility inconsistent with liberty? I will ask more, is it not inconsistent with public virtue? Not only does it lodge authority with the unskillful but with those whose interest it is to abuse it. It does more – it degrades the minds of men, it corrupts their hearts and debases their understanding, leading them to attach honor and to yield respect to something else than talent and virtue.

Source: Utopia (1516), Ch. 9 : Of the Religions of the Utopians
Context: Utopus having understood that before his coming among them the old inhabitants had been engaged in great quarrels concerning religion, by which they were so divided among themselves, that he found it an easy thing to conquer them, since, instead of uniting their forces against him, every different party in religion fought by themselves. After he had subdued them he made a law that every man might be of what religion he pleased, and might endeavour to draw others to it by the force of argument and by amicable and modest ways, but without bitterness against those of other opinions; but that he ought to use no other force but that of persuasion, and was neither to mix with it reproaches nor violence; and such as did otherwise were to be condemned to banishment or slavery.
This law was made by Utopus, not only for preserving the public peace, which he saw suffered much by daily contentions and irreconcilable heats, but because he thought the interest of religion itself required it. He judged it not fit to determine anything rashly; and seemed to doubt whether those different forms of religion might not all come from God, who might inspire man in a different manner, and be pleased with this variety; he therefore thought it indecent and foolish for any man to threaten and terrify another to make him believe what did not appear to him to be true. And supposing that only one religion was really true, and the rest false, he imagined that the native force of truth would at last break forth and shine bright, if supported only by the strength of argument, and attended to with a gentle and unprejudiced mind; while, on the other hand, if such debates were carried on with violence and tumults, as the most wicked are always the most obstinate, so the best and most holy religion might be choked with superstition, as corn is with briars and thorns; he therefore left men wholly to their liberty, that they might be free to believe as they should see cause.

The American Mercury (May 1930)
1930s
Context: Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner. The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principle — a mere counter in a grotesque and knavish game. If the right pressure could be applied to him, he would be cheerfully in favor of polygamy, astrology or cannibalism.
It is the aim of the Bill of Rights, if it has any remaining aim at all, to curb such prehensile gentry. Its function is to set a limitation upon their power to harry and oppress us to their own private profit. The Fathers, in framing it, did not have powerful minorities in mind; what they sought to hobble was simply the majority. But that is a detail. The important thing is that the Bill of Rights sets forth, in the plainest of plain language, the limits beyond which even legislatures may not go. The Supreme Court, in Marbury v. Madison, decided that it was bound to execute that intent, and for a hundred years that doctrine remained the corner-stone of American constitutional law.

In response to the question "Is it impossible to be totally objective?"
Larry King Interview (8 September 2003)
Context: My dad was part of the pioneers of public broadcasting in Canada. And he always told me the most important thing you can be in your career is fair. So we all start to see a box and hope that we see the box in the same way. But you recognize in time that people see the box or they see traffic accidents in entirely different ways. So you train yourself over the years to try and give accounting to the variety... and come to some decent place in the middle. But I'm not a slave to objectivity. I'm never quite sure what it means. And it means different things to different people.

1930s, State of the Union Address (1935)
Context: We find our population suffering from old inequalities, little changed by vast sporadic remedies. In spite of our efforts and in spite of our talk, we have not weeded out the over privileged and we have not effectively lifted up the underprivileged. Both of these manifestations of injustice have retarded happiness. No wise man has any intention of destroying what is known as the profit motive; because by the profit motive we mean the right by work to earn a decent livelihood for ourselves and for our families.
We have, however, a clear mandate from the people, that Americans must forswear that conception of the acquisition of wealth which, through excessive profits, creates undue private power over private affairs and, to our misfortune, over public affairs as well. In building toward this end we do not destroy ambition, nor do we seek to divide our wealth into equal shares on stated occasions. We continue to recognize the greater ability of some to earn more than others. But we do assert that the ambition of the individual to obtain for him and his a proper security, a reasonable leisure, and a decent living throughout life, is an ambition to be preferred to the appetite for great wealth and great power.

1961, Address to ANPA
Context: I want to talk about our common responsibilities in the face of a common danger. The events of recent weeks may have helped to illuminate that challenge for some; but the dimensions of its threat have loomed large on the horizon for many years. Whatever our hopes may be for the future — for reducing this threat or living with it — there is no escaping either the gravity or the totality of its challenge to our survival and to our security — a challenge that confronts us in unaccustomed ways in every sphere of human activity.
This deadly challenge imposes upon our society two requirements of direct concern both to the press and to the President — two requirements that may seem almost contradictory in tone, but which must be reconciled and fulfilled if we are to meet this national peril. I refer, first, to the need for a far greater public information; and, second, to the need for far greater official secrecy.

Source: Straight From The Heart (1985), Chapter Three, The Business Of politics, p. 67
Context: A successful politician must not only be able to read the mood of the public, he must have the skill to get the public on his side. The public is moved by mood more than logic, by instinct more than reason, and that is something that every politician must make use of or guard against

Editorial written in remembrance of Elijah Parish Lovejoy, Presbyterian minister, journalist, newspaper editor and abolitionist, who was murdered by a pro-slavery mob in Alton, Illinois during their attack on his warehouse to destroy his press and abolitionist materials.

Context: The right to discuss freely and openly, by speech, by the pen, by the press, all political questions, and to examine and animadvert upon all political institutions, is a right so clear and certain, so interwoven with our other liberties, so necessary, in fact to their existence, that without it we must fall at once into depression or anarchy. To say that he who holds unpopular opinions must hold them at the peril of his life, and that, if he expresses them in public, he has only himself to blame if they who disagree with him should rise and put him to death, is to strike at all rights, all liberties, all protection of the laws, and to justify and extenuate all crimes.

Give War a Chance (1992)

Booknotes interview (1994)
Context: I react to what is necessary. I would like to eschew any formula. There are some things where the government is absolutely inevitable, which we cannot get along without comprehensive state action. But there are many things — producing consumer goods, producing a wide range of entertainment, producing a wide level of cultural activity — where the market system, which independent activity is also important, so I react pragmatically. Where the market works, I'm for that. Where the government is necessary, I'm for that. I'm deeply suspicious of somebody who says, "I'm in favor of privatization," or, "I'm deeply in favor of public ownership." I'm in favor of whatever works in the particular case.

Letter http://www.franklinpapers.org/franklin/framedVolumes.jsp to Robert Morris (25 December 1783).
Epistles
Context: All Property indeed, except the Savage’s temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of publick Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents & all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity & the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man for the Conservation of the Individual & the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property of the Publick, who by their Laws have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire & live among Savages. — He can have no right to the Benefits of Society who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it.

1930s, Fireside Chat in the night before signing the Fair Labor Standards (1938)
Context: In nine cases out of ten the speaker or writer who, seeking to influence public opinion, descends from calm argument to unfair blows hurts himself more than his opponent.
The Chinese have a story on this — a story based on three or four thousand years of civilization: Two Chinese coolies were arguing heatedly in the midst of a crowd. A stranger expressed surprise that no blows were being struck. His Chinese friend replied: "The man who strikes first admits that his ideas have given out."

An allusion to the Abraham Lincoln's House Divided Speech and a reference to the Gospel of Matthew, 12:25: "[Every] city or house divided against itself shall not stand."
1960s, October surprise speech (1968)
Context: Throughout my entire public career I have followed the personal philosophy that I am a free man, an American, a public servant, and a member of my party, in that order always and only. For 37 years in the service of our Nation, first as a Congressman, as a Senator, and as Vice President, and now as your President, I have put the unity of the people first. I have put it ahead of any divisive partisanship. And in these times as in times before, it is true that a house divided against itself by the spirit of faction, of party, of region, of religion, of race, is a house that cannot stand.

Declaration of Conscience (1950)
Context: As a United States Senator, I am not proud of the way in which the Senate has been made a publicity platform for irresponsible sensationalism. I am not proud of the reckless abandon in which unproved charges have been hurled from this side of the aisle. I am not proud of the obviously staged, undignified countercharges that have been attempted in retaliation from the other side of the aisle. I don't like the way the Senate has been made a rendezvous for vilification, for selfish political gain at the sacrifice of individual reputations and national unity.

Fourth of July Oration.

Letter to Lord Hardinge (24 September, 1846).
Charles Stuart Parker (ed.), Sir Robert Peel from His Private Papers. Volume III (London: John Murray, 1899), pp. 473-474.

June 16
Addresses to the Virginia Ratifying Convention (1788)
Context: Mr. Chairman — A worthy member has asked, who are the militia, if they be not the people, of this country, and if we are not to be protected from the fate of the Germans, Prussians, &c. by our representation? I ask who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers. But I cannot say who will be the militia of the future day. If that paper on the table gets no alteration, the militia of the future day may not consist of all classes, high and low, and rich and poor; but may be confined to the lower and middle classes of the people, granting exclusion to the higher classes of the people. If we should ever see that day, the most ignominious punishments and heavy fines may be expected. Under the present government all ranks of people are subject to militia duty.

Letter to Richard Price (22 March 1778) regarding Price's pamphlet, Observations on Civil Liberty and the Justice and Policy of the War with America (1776).
Context: The fate of America is already decided — Behold her independent beyond recovery. — But will She be free and happy? — Can this new people, so advantageously placed for giving an example to the world of a constitution under which man may enjoy his rights, freely exercise all his faculties, and be governed only by nature, reason and justice — Can they form such a Constitution? — Can they establish it upon a never failing foundation, and guard against every source of division and corruption which may gradually undermine and destroy it? … It is impossible not to wish ardently that this people may attain to all the prosperity of which they are capable. They are the hope of the world. They may become a model to it. They may prove by fact that men can be free and yet tranquil; and that it is in their power to rescue themselves from the chains in which tyrants and knaves of all descriptions have presumed to bind them under the pretence of the public good. They may exhibit an example of political liberty, of religious liberty, of commercial liberty, and of industry. The Asylum they open to the oppressed of all nations should console the earth. The case with which the injured may escape from oppressive governments, will compel Princes to become just and cautious; and the rest of the world will gradually open their eyes upon the empty illusions with which they have been hitherto cheated by politicians. But for this purpose America must preserve herself from these illusions; and take care to avoid being what your ministerial writers are frequently saying She will be — an image of our Europe — a mass of divided powers contending for territory and commerce, and continually cementing the slavery of the people with their own blood.

Rogers Commission Report (1986)
Context: Let us make recommendations to ensure that NASA officials deal in a world of reality in understanding technological weaknesses and imperfections well enough to be actively trying to eliminate them. They must live in reality in comparing the costs and utility of the Shuttle to other methods of entering space. And they must be realistic in making contracts, in estimating costs, and the difficulty of the projects. Only realistic flight schedules should be proposed, schedules that have a reasonable chance of being met. If in this way the government would not support them, then so be it. NASA owes it to the citizens from whom it asks support to be frank, honest, and informative, so that these citizens can make the wisest decisions for the use of their limited resources.
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

The Rickover Effect (1992)
Context: As a guide to engineering ethics, I should like to commend to you a liberal adaptation of the injunction contained in the oath of Hippocrates that the professional man do nothing that will harm his client. Since engineering is a profession which affects the material basis of everyone’s life, there is almost always an unconsulted third party involved in any contact between the engineer and those who employ him — and that is the country, the people as a whole. These, too, are the engineer’s clients, albeit involuntarily. Engineering ethics ought therefore to safeguard their interests most carefully. Knowing more about the public effects his work will have, the engineer ought to consider himself an “officer of the court” and keep the general interest always in mind.

As We May Think (1945)
Context: The difficulty seems to be, not so much that we publish unduly in view of the extent and variety of present-day interests, but rather that publication has been extended far beyond our present ability to make real use of the record. The summation of human experience is being expanded at a prodigious rate, and the means we use for threading through the consequent maze to the momentarily important item is the same as was used in the days of square-rigged ships.

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

"Why We Need To Understand Science" in The Skeptical Inquirer Vol. 14, Issue 3 (Spring 1990)
Context: Science is much more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking. This is central to its success. Science invites us to let the facts in, even when they don’t conform to our preconceptions. It counsels us to carry alternative hypotheses in our heads and see which ones best match the facts. It urges on us a fine balance between no-holds-barred openness to new ideas, however heretical, and the most rigorous skeptical scrutiny of everything — new ideas and established wisdom. We need wide appreciation of this kind of thinking. It works. It’s an essential tool for a democracy in an age of change. Our task is not just to train more scientists but also to deepen public understanding of science.

"Lies and consequences." in The American Prospect (19 May 2002) http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=lies_and_consequences&gId=6282
Context: To rationalize their lies, people — and the governments, churches, or terrorist cells they compose — are apt to regard their private interests and desires as just. Clinton may have lied to preserve his power while telling himself that he was lying to protect “the people” who benefited from his presidency. Liars — especially liars in power — often conflate their interest with the public interest. (What’s good for General Motors is good for the United States.) Or they consider their lies sanctified by the essential goodness they presume to embody, like terrorists who believe that murder is sanctified by the godliness of their aspirations. Sanctimony probably engenders at least as much lying as cynicism. We can’t condemn lying categorically, but we should categorically suspect it.

Thomas Jefferson to Mordecai M. Noah, May 28, 1818. Manuscript Division, Papers of Thomas Jefferson. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/loc/madison.html
1810s
Context: Your sect by its sufferings has furnished a remarkable proof of the universal spirit of religious intolerance inherent in every sect, disclaimed by all while feeble, and practiced by all when in power. Our laws have applied the only antidote to this vice, protecting our religious, as they do our civil rights, by putting all on an equal footing. But more remains to be done, for although we are free by the law, we are not so in practice. Public opinion erects itself into an inquisition, and exercises its office with as much fanaticism as fans the flames of an Auto-da-fé. The prejudice still scowling on your section of our religion altho' the elder one, cannot be unfelt by ourselves. It is to be hoped that individual dispositions will at length mould themselves to the model of the law, and consider the moral basis, on which all our religions rest, as the rallying point which unites them in a common interest; while the peculiar dogmas branching from it are the exclusive concern of the respective sects embracing them, and no rightful subject of notice to any other. Public opinion needs reformation on that point, which would have the further happy effect of doing away the hypocritical maxim of "intus et lubet, foris ut moris". Nothing, I think, would be so likely to effect this, as to your sect particularly, as the more careful attention to education, which you recommend, and which, placing its members on the equal and commanding benches of science, will exhibit them as equal objects of respect and favor.

Quotes, The Assault on Reason (2007)
Context: For the first time in American history, the Executive Branch of our government has not only condoned but actively promoted the treatment of captives in wartime that clearly involves torture, thus overturning a prohibition established by General George Washington during the Revolutionary War.
It is too easy — and too partisan — to simply place the blame on the policies of President George W. Bush. We are all responsible for the decisions our country makes. We have a Congress. We have an independent judiciary. We have checks and balances. We are a nation of laws. We have free speech. We have a free press. Have they all failed us? Why has America's public discourse become less focused and clear, less reasoned? Faith in the power of reason — the belief that free citizens can govern themselves wisely and fairly by resorting to logical debate on the basis of the best evidence available, instead of raw power — remains the central premise of American democracy. This premise is now under assault.

Richard Steele, in The Spectator. Compare Aeneid 6.823: Vincet amor patriae ("Love of country shall prevail").
"In The City of God Augustine quoted the line but changed the verb from the future to the present tense (vincet › vincit). That form became a traditional quotation, often reprinted and reproduced on medals, monuments, and family crests. [...] "Vincit amor patriae" appeared at the head of Spectator no. 200 (October 19, 1711) without translation. The essays from the Spectator were published and republished as books as early as 1713. To assist readers who lacked Latin or Greek, the editors of the 1744 edition provided English translations for its epigraphs; to "Vincit amor patriae" was added "The noblest Motive is the Publick Good." It stuck. The translation was modernized and made its way into innumerable texts and onto public buildings. It is inscribed on the ceiling of the south corridor of the Library of Congress and attributed to Virgil. A mistranslation became a quotation." —Willis Goth Regier, Quotology (2010), pp. 40–41.
Misattributed

Source: Patriotism and Christianity http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Patriotism_and_Christianity (1896), Ch. 17
Context: One man does not assert the truth which he knows, because he feels himself bound to the people with whom he is engaged; another, because the truth might deprive him of the profitable position by which he maintains his family; a third, because he desires to attain reputation and authority, and then use them in the service of mankind; a fourth, because he does not wish to destroy old sacred traditions; a fifth, because he has no desire to offend people; a sixth, because the expression of the truth would arouse persecution, and disturb the excellent social activity to which he has devoted himself.
One serves as emperor, king, minister, government functionary, or soldier, and assures himself and others that the deviation from truth indispensable to his condition is redeemed by the good he does. Another, who fulfils the duties of a spiritual pastor, does not in the depths of his soul believe all he teaches, but permits the deviation from truth in view of the good he does. A third instructs men by means of literature, and notwithstanding the silence he must observe with regard to the whole truth, in order not to stir up the government and society against himself, has no doubt as to the good he does. A fourth struggles resolutely with the existing order as revolutionist or anarchist, and is quite assured that the aims he pursues are so beneficial that the neglect of the truth, or even of the falsehood, by silence, indispensable to the success of his activity, does not destroy the utility of his work.
In order that the conditions of a life contrary to the consciousness of humanity should change and be replaced by one which is in accord with it, the outworn public opinion must be superseded by a new and living one. And in order that the old outworn opinion should yield its place to the new living one, all who are conscious of the new requirements of existence should openly express them. And yet all those who are conscious of these new requirements, one in the name of one thing, and one in the name of another, not only pass them over in silence, but both by word and deed attest their exact opposites.

R. Buckminster Fuller on Education (University of Massachusetts Press, 1979), p. 130
1970s
Context: Up to the Twentieth Century, reality was everything humans could touch, smell, see, and hear. Since the initial publication of the chart of the electromagnetic spectrum, humans have learned that what they can touch, smell, see, and hear is less than one-millionth of reality. Ninety-nine percent of all that is going to affect our tomorrows is being developed by humans using instruments and working in ranges of reality that are nonhumanly sensible.

The Paris Review interview
Context: I think it’s the shock of every writer’s life when their first book is published. The shock of their lives. One has somehow to adjust from being anonymous, a figure in ambush, working from concealment, to being and working in full public view. It had an enormous effect on me. My impression was that I had suddenly walked into a wall of heavy hostile fire. <!-- That first year I wrote verses with three magical assonances to the line with the intention of abolishing certain critics! Now I read those reviews and they seem quite good. So it was writer’s paranoia. The shock to a person who’s never been named in public of being mentioned in newspapers can be absolutely traumatic. To everybody else it looks fairly harmless, even enviable. What I can see was that it enormously accelerated my determination to bring my whole operation into my own terms, to make my own form of writing and to abandon a lot of more casual paths that I might have followed. If I’d remained completely unknown, a writer not commented on, I think I might have gone off in all kinds of other directions. One can never be sure, of course.

Quotes, The Assault on Reason (2007)
Context: It is simply no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse. I know I am not alone in feeling that something has gone fundamentally wrong. In 2001, I had hoped it was an aberration when polls showed that three-quarters of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on Sept. 11. More than five years later, however, nearly half of the American public still believes Saddam was connected to the attack.

The New York Times interview (2017)
Context: I was never that involved in the machine of press and publicity as an actor because I’ve always kind of worked on the margins of my profession … And then when my son was younger and it did get a little bit more intrusive, I tried to come to terms with how I was personally going to handle someone coming up to me on the street and wanting some part of my time. … Now what I do — because this is how I live — when someone approaches me and says, "Can I have your autograph," I say: "No, I’ve retired from that part of the business. I just act now." … I say: "What’s your name?" … I touch them. I look at them. I have a real exchange … I’m not an actor because I want my picture taken. I’m an actor because I want to be part of the human exchange.

The Day the Universe Changed (1985), 1 - The Way We Are
Context: The oldest answers to the most basic questions about how to operate are common to virtually every culture on the planet, because at the simplest level, every culture needs to keep order -- especially this kind: (James Burke displays a wedding ring.) This is one of those things in life we protect most against being changed when knowledge changes us. We protect it by turning it into a ritual. When we get married, or buried, get christened, or anything else too important to play by ear, the event is turned into a kind of play where everybody gets a role they act out. It's a kind of public agreement to stick to the general rules about whatever it is. The people doing it are effectively saying, "No matter what else may change, we won't rock the boat! We're not maverick. You can trust us." Expressions of approval follow. Most of these ritual ways of answering a social need that we got from the past look like it. They include something from an ancient rite -- in this case, the old symbol of fertility: the ring. And then, it's all done in the presence of a supernatural being: a God. So, the agreement is also made under what was once a real threat of heavenly retribution if you broke your promise later on. Some things, this ritual says, must be permanent.

Games for Actors and non-Actors (1992)
Context: Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see a dance piece where the dancers danced in the first act and in the second showed the audience how to dance? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see a musical where in the first act the actors sang and in the second we all sang together?... This is... how artists should be—we should be creators and also teach the public how to be creators, how to make art, so that we may all use that art together.

Indian Opinion (1 October 1903)
1900s
Context: One thing we have endeavoured to observe most scrupulously, namely, never to depart from the strictest facts and, in dealing with the difficult questions that have arisen during the year, we hope that we have used the utmost moderation possible under the circumstances. Our duty is very simple and plain. We want to serve the community, and in our own humble way to serve the Empire. We believe in the righteousness of the cause, which it is our privilege to espouse. We have an abiding faith in the mercy of the Almighty God, and we have firm faith in the British Constitution. That being so, we should fail in our duty if we wrote anything with a view to hurt. Facts we would always place before our readers, whether they are palatable or not, and it is by placing them constantly before the public in their nakedness that the misunderstanding between the two communities in South Africa can be removed.

As quoted in LIFE magazine, Vol. 21, No. 6, (5 August 1946), p. 52 http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=3UwEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PP1&client=safari&pg=PA52#v=onepage&q&f=false; this has also been paraphrased as "It is inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office."
1940s–present
Context: In the present case it is a little inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible to any public office of trust or profit in the Republic. But I do not repine, for I am a subject of it only by force of arms.

Book I, ch. 7 http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/blackstone_bk1ch7.asp: Of the King's Prerogative.
Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–1769)
Context: In this distinct and separate existence of the judicial power, in a peculiar body of men, nominated indeed, but not removable at pleasure, by the crown, consists one main preservative of the public liberty; which cannot subsist long in any state, unless the administration of common justice be in some degree separated both from the legislative and the also from the executive power. Were it joined with the legislative, the life, liberty, and property of the subject would be in the hands of arbitrary judges, whose decisions would be then regulated only by their own opinions, and not by any fundamental principles of law; which, though legislators may depart from, yet judges are bound to observe. Were it joined with the executive, this union might soon be an overbalance for the legislative. For which reason... effectual care is taken to remove all judicial power out of the hands of the king's privy council; who, as then was evident from recent instances might soon be inclined to pronounce that for law, which was most agreeable to the prince or his officers. Nothing therefore is to be more avoided, in a free constitution, than uniting the provinces of a judge and a minister of state.

Letter to her niece Fanny Basset Washington (October 1789), as quoted in Memorials of Washington and of Mary, his Mother, and Martha, his Wife (1887) edited by James Walter, Robert Cary, p. 267
Context: I live a very dull life here and know nothing that passes in the town — I never go to any public place; indeed I think I am more like a state prisoner than anything else. There are certain bounds set for me which I must not depart from; and as I cannot do as I like, I am obstinate, and stay at home a great deal.

Burn This Book, p. 2 (2009)
Context: We all know nations that can be identified by the flight of writers from their shores. These are regimes whose fear of unmonitored writing is justified because truth is trouble. It is trouble for the warmonger, the torturer, the corporate thief, the political hack, the corrupt justice system, and for a comatose public. Unpersecuted, unjailed, unharrassed writers are trouble for the ignorant bully, the sly racist, and the predators feeding off the world’s resources. The alarm, the disquiet, writers raise is instructive because it is open and vulnerable, because if unpoliced it is threatening. Therefore the historical suppression of writers is the earliest harbinger of the steady peeling away of additional rights and liberties that will follow.

Dandelion Mind (2010)

1960s, The American Promise (1965)
Context: We must preserve the right of free speech and the right of free assembly. But the right of free speech does not carry with it, as has been said, the right to holler fire in a crowded theater. We must preserve the right to free assembly, but free assembly does not carry with it the right to block public thoroughfares to traffic. We do have a right to protest, and a right to march under conditions that do not infringe the constitutional rights of our neighbors. And I intend to protect all those rights as long as I am permitted to serve in this office. We will guard against violence, knowing it strikes from our hands the very weapons which we seek — progress, obedience to law, and belief in American values.

"6/24/95 Wendy Kaminer on Crime" (24 June 1995)
Context: I'm better at criticism than social engineering, so I always have a hard time answering good practical questions like "what can the average person do?" Of course, there are obvious answers, like the average person can get involved in local politics, the average person can get involved in violence prevention programs in his or her own neighborhood, the average person can engage with local radio and TV talk shows on crime. I'm afraid, though, that's not a very good answer. I'm best at knowing what I can do personally, which is write and think about issues like these, point out problems, and hope that people like you can do a better job than I can of figuring out where to go next. I've always seen the formulation of public policy — and solutions to social problems — as a collaborative effort. I've always felt that my part of the job was to analyze and criticize in the hope that other people might use my work to forge solutions.

Writing on the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing

2010s
Context: p>Americans have more freedom and broader rights than citizens of almost any other nation in the world, including the capacity to criticize their government and their elected officials. But we do not have the right to resort to violence — or the threat of violence — when we don’t get our way. Our founders constructed a system of government so that reason could prevail over fear. Oklahoma City proved once again that without the law there is no freedom.Criticism is part of the lifeblood of democracy. No one is right all the time. But we should remember that there is a big difference between criticizing a policy or a politician and demonizing the government that guarantees our freedoms and the public servants who enforce our laws.</p

Source: Antigone, Line 181

Free Culture (2004)
Context: By insisting on the Constitution's limits to copyright, obviously Eldred was not endorsing piracy. Indeed, in an obvious sense, he was fighting a kind of piracy — piracy of the public domain. When Robert Frost wrote his work and when Walt Disney created Mickey Mouse, the maximum copyright term was just fifty-six years. Because of interim changes, Frost and Disney had already enjoyed a seventy-five-year monopoly for their work. They had gotten the benefit of the bargain that the Constitution envisions: In exchange for a monopoly protected for fifty-six years, they created new work. But now these entities were using their power — expressed through the power of lobbyists' money — to get another twenty-year dollop of monopoly. That twenty-year dollop would be taken from the public domain. Eric Eldred was fighting a piracy that affects us all.

Remarks on the Republican platform (1860)
Context: Whatever might have been the motive, few acts have ever been so barren of good, and so fruitful of evil. The contest has exasperated the public mind. North and South, and engendered feelings of distrust, and I may say hate, that I fear it will take years to wear away. The lamentable tragedy at Harper's Ferry is clearly traceable to this unfortunate controversy about slavery in Kansas.; and while the chief actor in this invasion has exhibited some traits of character which challenge our admiration, yet his fanatical zeal seems to have blinded his moral perceptions, and hurried him into an unlawful attack upon the lives of a peaceful and unoffending community in a sister State, with the evident intention of raising a servile insurrection, which no one can contemplate without horror; and few, I believe very few, can be found so indifferent to the consequences of his acts, or so blinded by fanatical zeal, as not to believe that he justly suffered the penalty of the law which he had violated.
The Whig party North and South having been completely broken up by the perpetration of this great wrong, and the subsequent attempt of the slave power, backed up by the President of the United States, to force slavery upon an unwilling people in Kansas, and by fraud and violence to make Kansas a slave State, a new phase was given to public affairs and to the parties in the country. The Democratic party became greatly divided and distracted by this outrage, and would also have been entirely demolished, if Southern States had not rallied to the support of that party. All the Southern States, with the exception of Maryland, having gone over to the support of the Democratic party, and the aggressions of the Southern propagandists of slavery in their attempt to send slavery everywhere, the Democratic party became essentially a Southern sectional party, inasmuch as very few public men South, of either party, could be sustained by their constituents in opposing these outrageous measures in Congress, and the frauds and rascalities committed in Kansas. All the compacts, resolutions, and agreements, to keep the peace, so recently made, having been broken, confidence was greatly impaired, indeed I may say entirely destroyed, in the Democratic party, and in this state of things a new party was formed, called the Repuulican Party, to resist the Democratic party in its new and alarming attitude of pro-slavery aggression.

Why I Am an Agnostic (1896)
Context: The truth is that this belief in eternal pain has been the real persecutor.... It has darkened the lives of many millions. It made the cradle as terrible as the coffin. It enslaved nations and shed the blood of countless thousands. It sacrificed the wisest, the bravest and the best. It subverted the idea of justice, drove mercy from the heart, changed men to fiends and banished reason from the brain. Like a venomous serpent it crawls and coils and hisses in every orthodox creed. It makes man an eternal victim and God an eternal fiend. It is the one infinite horror. Every church in which it is taught is a public curse. Every preacher who teaches it is an enemy of mankind. Below this Christian dogma, savagery cannot go. It is the infinite of malice, hatred, and revenge. Nothing could add to the horror of hell, except the presence of its creator, God.

Strategic objectives of new Government (May 23, 2007)
Context: I do not favour the mushy ground of false consensus. The public interest is not served by parties incapable of defining their driving principles and standing their ground. Politics is either about the competition of ideas or it is about nothing. But just as the public interest is served by that competition, so it is ultimately better served by thoughtful reflection rather just than knee-jerk reaction.

American Diplomacy (1951), World War I
Context: There are certain sad appreciations we have to come to about human nature on the basis of these recent wars. One of them is that suffering does not always make men better. Another is that people are not always more reasonable than governments; that public opinion, or what passes for public opinion, is not invariably a moderating force in the jungle of politics. It may be true, and I suspect it is, that the mass of people everywhere are normally peace-loving and would accept many restraints and sacrifices in preference to the monstrous calamities of war. But I also suspect that what purports to be public opinion in most countries that consider themselves to have popular government is often not really the consensus of the feelings of the mass of the people at all, but rather the expression of the interests of special highly vocal minorities — politicians, commentators, and publicity-seekers of all sorts: people who live by their ability to draw attention to themselves and die, like fish out of water, if they are compelled to remain silent. These people take refuge in the pat and chauvinistic slogans because they are incapable of understanding any others, because these slogans are safer from the standpoint of short-term gain, because the truth is sometimes a poor competitor in the market place of ideas — complicated, unsatisfying, full of dilemma, always vulnerable to misinterpretation and abuse. The counsels of impatience and hatred can always be supported by the crudest and cheapest symbols; for the counsels of moderation, the reasons are often intricate, rather than emotional, and difficult to explain. And so the chauvinists of all times and places go their appointed way: plucking the easy fruits, reaping the little triumphs of the day at the expense of someone else tomorrow, deluging in noise and filth anyone who gets in their way, dancing their reckless dance on the prospects for human progress, drawing the shadow of a great doubt over the validity of democratic institutions. And until people learn to spot the fanning of mass emotions and the sowing of bitterness, suspicion, and intolerance as crimes in themselves — as perhaps the greatest disservice that can be done to the cause of popular government — this sort of thing will continue to occur.

Chap.II: The Rise Of The Historic Level
The Revolt of the Masses (1929)
Context: To-day the [Enlightenment] ideal has been changed into a reality; not only in legislation, which is the mere framework of public life, but in the heart of every individual, whatever his ideas may be, and even if he be a reactionary in his ideas, that is to say, even when he attacks and castigates institutions by which those rights are sanctioned.… The sovereignty of the unqualified individual, of the human being as such, generically, has now passed from being a juridical idea or ideal to be a psychological state inherent in the average man. And note this, that when what was before an ideal becomes a component part of reality, it inevitably ceases to be an ideal. The prestige and the magic that are attributes of the ideal are volatilised.

Source: Antigone, Line 660

What Baba Means by Real Work (1954)
Context: If instead of doing the real work of love you start doing organized propaganda work for me, it is absurd. I need no propaganda or publicity. I do not want propaganda and publicity, but I do want love and honesty. If you cannot live the life of love and honesty, you should stop working for me. I am quite capable of doing my Universal Work alone.

The Age for Love
Context: I remember, the reasoning of a man determined to arrive that I tried to lull to sleep the inward voice that cried, "You have no right to put on paper, to give to the public what this noble writer said to you, supposing that he was receiving a poet, not a reporter." But I heard also the voice of my chief saying, "You will never succeed."

The Evolution of Modern Capitalism: A Study of Machine Production (1906), Ch. XVII Civilisation and Industrial Development
Context: We now stand face to face with the main objection so often raised against all endeavours to remedy industrial and social diseases by the expansion of public control.... The strife, danger, and waste of industrial competition are necessary conditions to industrial vitality.<!--section 11, p. 417

Letter to John Adams (10 July 1775)
Context: How difficult the task to quench the fire and the pride of private ambition, and to sacrifice ourselves and all our hopes and expectations to the public weal! How few have souls capable of so noble an undertaking! How often are the laurels worn by those who have had no share in earning them! But there is a future recompense of reward, to which the upright man looks, and which he will most assuredly obtain, provided he perseveres unto the end.

Summation for the Prosecution, July 26, 1946
Quotes from the Nuremberg Trials (1945-1946)
Context: These men saw no evil, spoke none, and none was uttered in their presence. This claim might sound very plausible if made by one defendant. But when we put all their stories together, the impression which emerges of the Third Reich, which was to last a thousand years, is ludicrous. If we combine only the stories of the front bench, this is the ridiculous composite picture of Hitler's Government that emerges. It was composed of:
A No. 2 man who knew nothing of the excesses of the Gestapo which he created, and never suspected the Jewish extermination programme although he was the signer of over a score of decrees which instituted the persecution of that race;
A No. 3 man who was merely an innocent middleman transmitting Hitler's orders without even reading them, like a postman or delivery boy;
A Foreign Minister who knew little of foreign affairs and nothing of foreign policy;
A Field-Marshal who issued orders to the armed forces but had no idea of the results they would have in practice …
… This may seem like a fantastic exaggeration, but this is what you would actually be obliged to conclude if you were to acquit these defendants.
They do protest too much. They deny knowing what was common knowledge. They deny knowing plans and programmes that were as public as Mein Kampf and the Party programme. They deny even knowing the contents of documents which they received and acted upon. … The defendants have been unanimous, when pressed, in shifting the blame on other men, sometimes on one and sometimes on another. But the names they have repeatedly picked are Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich, Goebbels, and Bormann. All of these are dead or missing. No matter how hard we have pressed the defendants on the stand, they have never pointed the finger at a living man as guilty. It is a temptation to ponder the wondrous workings of a fate which has left only the guilty dead and only the innocent alive. It is almost too remarkable.
The chief villain on whom blame is placed — some of the defendants vie with each other in producing appropriate epithets — is Hitler. He is the man at whom nearly every defendant has pointed an accusing finger.
I shall not dissent from this consensus, nor do I deny that all these dead and missing men shared the guilt. In crimes so reprehensible that degrees of guilt have lost their significance they may have played the most evil parts. But their guilt cannot exculpate the defendants. Hitler did not carry all responsibility to the grave with him. All the guilt is not wrapped in Himmler's shroud. It was these dead men whom these living chose to be their partners in this great conspiratorial brotherhood, and the crimes that they did together they must pay for one by one.

Ch. 21 : Conclusion http://www.wealthandwant.com/HG/SP/SP22_Conclusion.htm
Social Problems (1883)
Context: More is given to us than to any people at any time before; and, therefore, more is required of us. We have made, and still are making, enormous advances on material lines. It is necessary that we commensurately advance on moral lines. Civilization, as it progresses, requires a higher conscience, a keener sense of justice, a warmer brotherhood, a wider, loftier, truer public spirit. Falling these, civilization must pass into destruction. It cannot be maintained on the ethics of savagery. For civilization knits men more and more closely together, and constantly tends to subordinate the individual to the whole, and to make more and more important social conditions.

Cosmic Imagery: Key Images in the History of Science (2008)

Vol. XIV: Great Musicians, http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/20318 Chapter 8: "Ludwig van Beethoven," pp. 228-230:
Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great (1916)
Context: There have always existed three ways of keeping the people loving and loyal. One is to leave them alone, to trust them and not to interfere. This plan, however, has very seldom been practised, because the politicians regard the public as a cow to be milked, and something must be done to make it stand quiet.
So they try Plan Number Two, which consists in hypnotizing the public by means of shows, festivals, parades, prizes and many paid speeches, sermons and editorials, wherein and whereby the public is told how much is being done for it, and how fortunate it is in being protected and wisely cared for by its divinely appointed guardians. Then the band strikes up, the flags are waved, three passes are made, one to the right and two to the left; and we, being completely under the hypnosis, hurrah ourselves hoarse.
Plan Number Three is a very ancient one and is always held back to be used in case Number Two fails. It is for the benefit of the people who do not pass readily under hypnotic control. If there are too many of these, they have been known to pluck up courage and answer back to the speeches, sermons and editorials. Sometimes they refuse to hurrah when the bass-drum plays, in which case they have occasionally been arrested for contumacy and contravention by stocky men, in wide-awake hats, who lead the strenuous life. This Plan Number Three provides for an armed force that shall overawe, if necessary, all who are not hypnotized. The army is used for two purposes — to coerce disturbers at home, and to get up a war at a distance, and thus distract attention from the troubles near at hand. Napoleon used to say that the only sure cure for internal dissension was a foreign war: this would draw the disturbers away, on the plea of patriotism, so they would win enough outside loot to satisfy them, or else they would all get killed, it really didn't matter much; and as for loot, if it was taken from foreigners, there was no sin.
A careful analyst might here say that Plan Number Three is only a variation of Plan Number Two — the end being gained by hypnotic effects in either event, for the army is conscripted from the people to use against the people, just as you turn steam from a boiler into the fire-box to increase the draft....

Letter from the field of Waterloo (June 1815), as quoted in Decisive Battles of the World (1899) by Edward Shepherd Creasy. Quoted too in Memorable Battles in English History: Where Fought, why Fought, and Their Results; with the Military Lives of the Commanders by William Henry Davenport Adams; Editor Griffith and Farran, 1863. p. 400.
Context: My heart is broken by the terrible loss I have sustained in my old friends and companions and my poor soldiers. Believe me, nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won: the bravery of my troops hitherto saved me from the greater evil; but to win such a battle as this of Waterloo, at the expens of so many gallant friends, could only be termed a heavy misfortune but for the result to the public.

The Progress of Fifty Years (1893)
Context: The press, many-tongued, surpassed itself in reproaches upon these women who had so far departed from their sphere as to speak in public. But, with anointed lips and a consecration which put even life itself at stake, these peerless women pursued the even tenor of their way, saying to their opponents only: "Woe is me, if I preach not this gospel of freedom for the slave." Over all came the melody of Whittier's "When woman's heart is breaking Shall woman's voice be hushed? "

Roast of Robert Novak at the Conservative Political Action Committee (11 February 1994)

Cited in: . Brief Biographies of Inventors of Machines for the Manufacture of Textile .... (1863) p. xiv; Highlighted section cited in: Samuel Smiles Industrial biography; iron-workers and tool-makers http://books.google.com/books?id=5trBcaXuazgC&pg=PA170, (1864) p. 170
Context: Although it is not, abstractedly speaking, of importance to know who first made a most valuable experiment, or to what individual the community is indebted for the invention of the most useful machine, yet the sense of mankind has in this, as in several other things, been in direct opposition to frigid reasoning; and we are pleased with a recollection of benefits, and with rendering honour to the memory of those who bestowed them. Were public benefactors to be allowed to pass away like hewers of wood and drawers of water, without commemoration, genius and enterprise would be deprived of their most coveted distinction, and after-times would lose incentives to that emulation which urges us to cherish and practise what has been worthy of commendation or imitation in our forefathers; and to make their works, which may have served for a light and been useful to the age in which they lived, a guide and a spur to ourselves

Second Speech on Conciliation with America (1775), Works of Edmund Burke Volume ii, p. 136

Source: The Wealth of Nations (1776), Book I, Chapter XI, Part III, Conclusion of the Chapter, p. 292.
Context: The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

Property (1935)
Context: If adequate incentives could be assured, public ownership and scientific operation of banking, sources of electric energy, basic natural resources, chief means of transportation and communication, and steel, would increase productivity enormously by national planning and correlating.

Inaugural address (1889)
Context: There is no constitutional or legal requirement that the President shall take the oath of office in the presence of the people, but there is so manifest an appropriateness in the public induction to office of the chief executive officer of the nation that from the beginning of the Government the people, to whose service the official oath consecrates the officer, have been called to witness the solemn ceremonial. The oath taken in the presence of the people becomes a mutual covenant. The officer covenants to serve the whole body of the people by a faithful execution of the laws, so that they may be the unfailing defense and security of those who respect and observe them, and that neither wealth, station, nor the power of combinations shall be able to evade their just penalties or to wrest them from a beneficent public purpose to serve the ends of cruelty or selfishness.

Letter to Henry Lee (10 August 1824)
1820s
Context: Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties: 1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes. 2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depositary of the public interests. In every country these two parties exist, and in every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves. Call them, therefore, liberals and serviles, Jacobins and Ultras, whigs and tories, republicans and federalists, aristocrats and democrats, or by whatever name you please, they are the same parties still and pursue the same object. The last appellation of aristocrats and democrats is the true one expressing the essence of all.

Quotes, The Assault on Reason (2007)
Context: September 11 had a profound impact on all of us. But after initially responding in an entirely appropriate way, the administration began to heighten and distort public fear of terrorism to create a political case for attacking Iraq. Despite the absence of proof, Iraq was said to be working hand in hand with al-Qaeda and to be on the verge of a nuclear weapons capability. Defeating Saddam was conflated with bringing war to the terrorists, even though it really meant diverting attention and resources from those who actually attacked us.
When the president of the United States stood before the people of this nation and invited us to "imagine" a terrorist attack with a nuclear weapon, he was referring to terrorists who actually had no connection to Iraq. But because our nation had been subjected to the horrors of 9/11, when our president said "imagine with me this new fear," it was easy enough to bypass the reasoning process that might otherwise have led people to ask, "Wait a minute, Mr. President, where's your evidence?"

1890s, The Path of the Law (1897)
Context: When we study law we are not studying a mystery but a well-known profession. We are studying what we shall want in order to appear before judges, or to advise people in such a way as to keep them out of court. The reason why it is a profession, why people will pay lawyers to argue for them or to advise them, is that in societies like ours the command of the public force is intrusted to the judges in certain cases, and the whole power of the state will be put forth, if necessary, to carry out their judgments and decrees. People want to know under what circumstances and how far they will run the risk of coming against what is so much stronger than themselves, and hence it becomes a business to find out when this danger is to be feared. The object of our study, then, is prediction, the prediction of the incidence of the public force through the instrumentality of the courts.

Draft for a Statement of Human Obligation (1943)
Context: Anyone whose attention and love are really directed towards the reality outside the world recognizes at the same time that he is bound, both in public and private life, by the single and permanent obligation to remedy, according to his responsibilities and to the extent of his power, all the privations of soul and body which are liable to destroy or damage the earthly life of any human being whatsoever.
This obligation cannot legitimately be held to be limited by the insufficiency of power or the nature of the responsibilities until everything possible has been done to explain the necessity of the limitation to those who will suffer by it; the explanation must be completely truthful and must be such as to make it possible for them to acknowledge the necessity.
No combination of circumstances ever cancels this obligation. If there are circumstances which seem to cancel it as regards a certain man or category of men, they impose it in fact all the more imperatively.
The thought of this obligation is present to all men, but in very different forms and in very varying degrees of clarity. Some men are more and some are less inclined to accept — or to refuse — it as their rule of conduct.

and that situates what we call the moral life in the larger context of human ­flourishing. How eye-opening are arguments that suggest that happiness is not a state of passive feeling but a life of fulfilling activity, and especially of the unimpeded and excellent activity of our specifically human powers—of acting and making, of thinking and learning, of loving and befriending. How illuminating it is to see the ethical life discussed not in terms of benefits and harms or rules of right and wrong, but in terms of character, and to understand that good character, formed through habituation, is more than holding right opinions or having "good values," but is a binding up of heart and mind that both frees us from enslaving passions and frees us for fine and beautiful deeds. How encouraging it is to read an account of human life—the only such account in our philosophical tradition—that speaks at length and profoundly about friendship, culminating in the claim that the most fulfilling form of friendship is the sharing of speeches and thoughts.
Looking for an Honest Man (2009)