Quotes about public
page 38

“He led a simple and disciplined public life and stood for social equality and women empowerment, founded Basava Samiti for spreading principles adopted by 12th Century social reformer Basaveshwara.”

Basappa Danappa Jatti (1912–2002) Indian politician

The Hindu Reporter in: ‘Principles followed by B.D. Jatti still relevant’ http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/article3879641.ece, The Hindu, 10 September 2012

“During his distinguished public life he set an example of selfless service and stood for value-based politics. He set high standards of moral rectitude and political sagacity as Vice-President and guided the nation successfully.”

Basappa Danappa Jatti (1912–2002) Indian politician

The Hindu Reporter in: Governor, CM condole Jatti's death http://www.thehindu.com/2002/06/08/stories/2002060804340400.htm, The Hindu, 8 June 2002.

Mohammad Hidayatullah photo
Mohammad Hidayatullah photo
Shankar Dayal Sharma photo

“President with a mind of his own, was a politician of high values, a distinguished parliamentarian, and a great scholar. His brilliant academic and political career was a saga of dedication and abiding commitment to the pursuit of higher learning and public service.”

Shankar Dayal Sharma (1918–1999) Indian politician

A.B.Vajpayee in: p. 233.
Commissions and Omissions by Indian Presidents and Their Conflicts with the Prime Ministers Under the Constitution: 1977-2001

Zail Singh photo

“His entire personality commanded respect by its example of self-reliance and resolute determination, enabling him to carve a solid reputation for himself in public life.”

Zail Singh (1916–1994) Indian politician and former President of India

Source: First among equals President of India, p. 70.

Neelam Sanjiva Reddy photo
Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed photo
V. V. Giri photo
V. P. Singh photo

“He was shy, with a slightly nervous laugh, but to those who knew him he fully justified his public image of honesty, being open to discussion of any aspect of his career and willing to accept criticism.”

V. P. Singh (1931–2008) Indian politician

VP Singh: Former prime minister of India who tried to improve the lot of his country's lower castes

Chandra Shekhar photo

“Immorality and opportunism holds sway in public life. Unprincipled alliances are being forged going against the verdict of the people. This alliance is not going to last long.”

Chandra Shekhar (1927–2007) Indian politician

Jyoti Basu in: Sanjoy Hazarika Rival of Singh Becomes India Premier http://www.nytimes.com/1990/11/10/world/rival-of-singh-becomes-india-premier.html?scp=17&sq=%22v%20p%20singh%22&st=cse, The New York Times, 10 November 1990
On his appointment as Prime Minister after he toppled Singh engineering defections defections.

M. Balamuralikrishna photo

“With all awards and accolades at the international level and his outstanding contribution to classical music, his appeal was not restricted to purists or the elite connoisseur. He endeared himself to the public at large by his tasteful rendering of light music and film songs.”

M. Balamuralikrishna (1930–2016) Carnatic vocalist, instrumentalist and playback singer

Jayalalithaa in: Balamuralikrishna deserves Bharat Ratna: Jayalalithaa http://www.hindu.com/2005/07/26/stories/2005072617030500.htm, Thee Hindu, 26 Jul y 2005.

M. Balamuralikrishna photo

“An enduring legacy of Balamuralikrishna is the wider accessibility of classical kirtanas to the public. Many of his contemporaries tend to treat classical and popular music as watertight compartments.”

M. Balamuralikrishna (1930–2016) Carnatic vocalist, instrumentalist and playback singer

Garimella Subramaniam in: A musical colossus http://hindu.com/2004/07/06/stories/2004070603272000.htm, The Hindu, 6 July 2004.

Kenneth Minogue photo

“We might perhaps be more tolerant of rulers turning preachers if they were moral giants. But what citizen looks at the government today thinking how wise and virtuous it is? Public respect for politicians has long been declining, even as the population at large has been seduced into responding to each new problem by demanding that the government should act. That we should be constantly demanding that an institution we rather despise should solve large problems argues a notable lack of logic in the demos.”

Kenneth Minogue (1930–2013) Australian political theorist

The statesmen of times past have been replaced by a set of barely competent social workers eager to help 'ordinary people' solve daily problems in their lives. This strange aspiration is a very large change in public life. The electorates of earlier times would have responded with derision to politicians seeking power in order to solve our problems. Today, the demos votes for them.
Introduction, p. 3
The Servile Mind: How Democracy Erodes the Moral Life

“Samuel Hartlib, a celebrated writer on husbandry in the last century, a gentleman much beloved and esteemed by Milton, in his preface to the work, commonly called his Legacy, laments greatly that no public director of husbandry was established in England By Authority; and that we had not adopted the Flemish custom of letting farms upon improvement… Cromwell, in consequence of this admirable performance, allowed Hartlib a pension of 100l.”

Walter Harte (1709–1774) poet and historian

a year ; and Hartlib afterwards, the better to fulfil the intentions of his benefactor, procured Dr. Beati's excellent annotations on the Legacy, with other valuable pieces from bis numerous correspondents.
Source: Essays on Husbandry (1764), p. 3.

“Samuel Hartlib, a celebrated writer on husbandry in the last century, a gentleman much beloved and esteemed by Milton, in his preface to the work, commonly called his Legacy, laments greatly that no public director of husbandry was established in England By Authority; and that we had not adopted the Flemish custom of letting farms upon improvement… Cromwell, in consequence of this admirable performance, allowed Hartlib a pension of 100l.”

Samuel Hartlib (1600–1662) German-British polymath

a year ; and Hartlib afterwards, the better to fulfil the intentions of his benefactor, procured Dr. Beati's excellent annotations on the Legacy, with other valuable pieces from bis numerous correspondents.
Walter Harte. Essays on Husbandry (1764), p. 3.

Swathi Thirunal Rama Varma photo
Anish Kapoor photo
Rekha photo
Ken Ham photo

“Our research has found that public school textbooks are using the same word science for observational science and historical science. They arbitrarily define science as naturalism and outlaw the supernatural. They present molecules-to-man evolution as fact.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

They're imposing (I believe) the religion of naturalism or atheism on generations of students. You see, I assert that the word 'science' has been hijacked by secularists in teaching evolution to force the religion of naturalism on generations of kids.
"Bill Nye Debates Ken Ham" (February 4, 2014)

Francesco Maria Zanotti photo

“He who writes in a rich language is like a man with many suits of clothes, some for home wear, others in which to appear in public, and others for state occasions.”

Francesco Maria Zanotti (1692–1777) Italian philosopher

Chi scrive in una lingua abbondante, è come un uomo che ha molti habiti, altri per usi domestici, altri per prodursi in pubblico, altri per le feste solenni.
XI.
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 271.
Paradossi

John Marshall Harlan photo

“If evils will result from the commingling of the two races upon public highways established for the benefit of all, they will be infinitely less than those that will surely come from state legislation regulating the enjoyment of civil rights upon the basis of race.”

John Marshall Harlan (1833–1911) United States Union Army officer and Supreme Court Associate Justice

We boast of the freedom enjoyed by our people above all other peoples. But it is difficult to reconcile that boast with a state of the law which, practically, puts the brand of servitude and degradation upon a large class of our fellow-citizens, our equals before the law. The thin disguise of "equal" accommodations for passengers in railroad coaches will not mislead anyone, nor atone for the wrong this day done.
1890s, Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

Sandra Fluke photo
Guy Debord photo
Tzachi Hanegbi photo

“In his actions was a crude trampling of the law and of proper administrative rules, politicization of the public service, and the use of public resources to advance personal and political interests.”

Tzachi Hanegbi (1957) Israeli politician

Israeli State Comptroller and judge Eliezer Goldberg on Tzachi Hanegbi in his annual report, published September 24, 2004.

Oswald Mosley photo

“Did he not appear to you to be a public man of no little courage, no little candour and no little ability.”

Oswald Mosley (1896–1980) British politician; founder of the British Union of Fascists

Lord Chief Justice Hewart

Samuel Alito photo

“You have obviously had a very distinguished record, and I certainly commend you for long service in the public interest. I think it is a very commendable career and I am sure you will have a successful one as a judge.”

Samuel Alito (1950) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Sen. Ted Kennedy, speaking on Alito's nomination to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals. Committee On The Judiciary, U.S. Senate, Hearing, [1990-04-05].

John Barrymore photo
Camille Paglia photo

“Films of the mating behavior of most other species — a staple of public television of America — demonstrate that the female chooses.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Males pursue, show off, brawl, scuffle, and make general fools of themselves for love. A major failing of most feminist ideology is its dumb, ungenerous stereotyping of men as tyrants and abusers, when in fact — as I know full well from my own mortifying lesbian experience — men are tormented by women’s flirtatiousness and hemming and hawing, their manipulations and changeableness, their humiliating rejections. Cock teasing is a universal reality. It is part of women’s merciless testing and cold-eyed comparison shopping for potential mates. Men will do anything to win the favor of women.
Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 35

Nathaniel Hawthorne photo
Ken Livingstone photo
Sinclair Lewis photo
Alexander Mackenzie photo
Periyar E. V. Ramasamy photo
Jon Postel photo
Jane Austen photo
John Stuart Mill photo

“In those days I had seen little further than the old school of political economists into the possibilities of fundamental improvement in social arrangements. Private property, as now understood, and inheritance, appeared to me, as to them, the dernier mot of legislation: and I looked no further than to mitigating the inequalities consequent on these institutions, by getting rid of primogeniture and entails. The notion that it was possible to go further than this in removing the injustice -- for injustice it is, whether admitting of a complete remedy or not -- involved in the fact that some are born to riches and the vast majority to poverty, I then reckoned chimerical, and only hoped that by universal education, leading to voluntary restraint on population, the portion of the poor might be made more tolerable. In short, I was a democrat, but not the least of a Socialist. We were now much less democrats than I had been, because so long as education continues to be so wretchedly imperfect, we dreaded the ignorance and especially the selfishness and brutality of the mass: but our ideal of ultimate improvement went far beyond Democracy, and would class us decidedly under the general designation of Socialists. While we repudiated with the greatest energy that tyranny of society over the individual which most Socialistic systems are supposed to involve, we yet looked forward to a time when society will no longer be divided into the idle and the industrious; when the rule that they who do not work shall not eat, will be applied not to paupers only, but impartially to all; when the division of the produce of labour, instead of depending, as in so great a degree it now does, on the accident of birth, will be made by concert on an acknowledged principle of justice; and when it will no longer either be, or be thought to be, impossible for human beings to exert themselves strenuously in procuring benefits which are not to be exclusively their own, but to be shared with the society they belong to. The social problem of the future we considered to be, how to unite the greatest individual liberty of action, with a common ownership in the raw material of the globe, and an equal participation of all in the benefits of combined labour. We had not the presumption to suppose that we could already foresee, by what precise form of institutions these objects could most effectually be attained, or at how near or how distant a period they would become practicable. We saw clearly that to render any such social transformation either possible or desirable, an equivalent change of character must take place both in the uncultivated herd who now compose the labouring masses, and in the immense majority of their employers. Both these classes must learn by practice to labour and combine for generous, or at all events for public and social purposes, and not, as hitherto, solely for narrowly interested ones. But the capacity to do this has always existed in mankind, and is not, nor is ever likely to be, extinct. Education, habit, and the cultivation of the sentiments, will make a common man dig or weave for his country, as readily as fight for his country. True enough, it is only by slow degrees, and a system of culture prolonged through successive generations, that men in general can be brought up to this point. But the hindrance is not in the essential constitution of human nature. Interest in the common good is at present so weak a motive in the generality not because it can never be otherwise, but because the mind is not accustomed to dwell on it as it dwells from morning till night on things which tend only to personal advantage. When called into activity, as only self-interest now is, by the daily course of life, and spurred from behind by the love of distinction and the fear of shame, it is capable of producing, even in common men, the most strenuous exertions as well as the most heroic sacrifices. The deep-rooted selfishness which forms the general character of the existing state of society, is so deeply rooted, only because the whole course of existing institutions tends to foster it; modern institutions in some respects more than ancient, since the occasions on which the individual is called on to do anything for the public without receiving its pay, are far less frequent in modern life, than the smaller commonwealths of antiquity.”

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/230/mode/1up pp. 230-233

John Stuart Mill photo
Ulysses S. Grant photo
Ulysses S. Grant photo

“I am a Republican for many other reasons. The Republican party assures protection to life and property, the public credit and the payment of the debts of the Government, State, county, or municipality so far as it can control. The Democratic party does not promise this; if it does, it has broken its promises to the extent of hundreds of millions, as many Northern Democrats can testify to their sorrow.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

As quoted in Words of Our Hero, Ulysses S. Grant https://books.google.com/books?id=wqJBAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA48&lpg=PA48&dq=%22the+one+thing+i+never+wanted+to+see+again+was+a+military+parade%22&source=bl&ots=zH525oYpJn&sig=ACfU3U0GLPNgij-FmXIDwgWp_Kg8zDskWg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj4uc7PzKniAhUq1lkKHWhlBfQQ6AEwBXoECAUQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22the%20one%20thing%20i%20never%20wanted%20to%20see%20again%20was%20a%20military%20parade%22&f=false, by Jeremiah Chaplin, p. 58
1880s, Speech at Warren, Ohio (1880)

David Frawley photo
Robert Greene photo
Steve Jobs photo
Samuel Adams photo

“The eyes of the people are upon us. […] If we despond, public confidence is destroyed, the people will no longer yield their support to a hopeless contest, and American liberty is no more. […] Despondency becomes not the dignity of our cause, nor the character of those who are its supporters. Let us awaken then, and evince a different spirit, - a spirit that shall inspire the people with confidence in themselves and in us, - a spirit that will encourage them to persevere in this glorious struggle, until their rights and liberties shall be established on a rock. We have proclaimed to the world our determination 'to die freemen, rather than to live slaves.”

Samuel Adams (1722–1803) American statesman, Massachusetts governor, and political philosopher

We have appealed to Heaven for the justice of our cause, and in Heaven we have placed our trust. [...] We shall never be abandoned by Heaven while we act worthy of its aid and protection.
addressing a meeting of delegates to the Continental Congress, assembled at Yorktown, Pennsylvania, September 1777 ; as quoted in The Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams, Volume 2, by William Vincent Wells; Little, Brown, and Company; Boston, 1865 ; pp. 492-493

Richard Dawkins photo
John Ralston Saul photo
James P. Gray photo
Hans Morgenthau photo

“Hitler in 1919 took a position in the Communist run Bavarian Soviet Republic, wearing in public a red armband, according to a number of historians including Thomas Weber. And a little later after the Bavarian Soviet Republic was defeated, Hitler claimed to be a ‘social democrat.’”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: Killing History: The False Left-Right Political Spectrum and the Battle between the ‘Free Left’ and the ‘Statist Left', (2019), p. 285

Steve Jobs photo
Michel Henry photo
Philip Roth photo
Thomas Hylland Eriksen photo

“Many social scientists, including anthropologists, have been interested in the power inherent in gender relations, often described through the idiom of female oppression. It can be argued that men usually tend to exert more power over women than vice versa. In most societies, men generally hold the most important political and religious positions, and very often men control the formal economy. In some societies, it may even be prescribed for women to cover their body and face when they appear in the public sphere, and, paradoxically, these practices sometimes become more common as their societies become more modern. On the other hand, women are often capable of exerting considerable informal power, not least in the domestic sphere. Anthropologists cannot state unequivocally that women are oppressed before they have investigated all aspects of their society, including how the women (and men) themselves perceive their situation. One cannot dismiss the possibility that certain women in western Asia (the Middle East) see the ‘liberated’ western woman as more oppressed – by professional career pressure, demands to look good and other expectations – than themselves.
When studying societies undergoing change, which perhaps most anthropologists do today, it is important to look at the value conflicts and tensions between different interest groups that are particularly central. Often these conflicts are expressed through gender relations.”

Thomas Hylland Eriksen (1962) Norwegian social anthropologist and professor

Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 2 : Key Concepts

Marianne Williamson photo
Wilhelmina of the Netherlands photo
Marilyn Ferguson photo

“As historian James MacGregor Burns noted, they also formulated their protests as official appeals to the king "shipped across the Atlantic after suitable hometown publicity."”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Five, The American Matrix for Transformation

John Updike photo
Jacinda Ardern photo
Ralph Nader photo
John Allen Paulos photo
Noam Chomsky photo
Michael Hudson (economist) photo

“If people want to pursue accountability (about the lockdown of Wuhan City due to the COVID-19 outbreak and Wuhan City Government below-standard handling of the outbreak) and the public has a strong opinion, we (Zhou Xianwang and Wuhan Communist Party Chief Ma Guoqiang) are willing to step down.”

Zhou Xianwang (1963) Chinese politician

Zhou Xianwang (2020) cited in " Mayor of Wuhan, epicenter city of coronavirus, offers to resign over outbreak https://nypost.com/2020/01/27/mayor-of-wuhan-epicenter-city-of-coronavirus-offers-to-resign-over-outbreak/" on New York Post, 27 January 2019.

Ho Iat Seng photo

“We (Government of Macau) appeal to the public not to go out unless it's absolutely necessary. That's the best prevention (against the COVID-19). We had no choice but to cancel the (2020 Lunar) new year celebrations even when everything was ready.”

Ho Iat Seng (1957) Chief Executive of Macau

Ho Iat Seng (2020) cited in " Macau confirms second patient infected with Chinese coronavirus https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3047337/macau-confirms-second-patient-infected-chinese-coronavirus?utm_content=article&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR3J-0hvJBW78tSA93OtCjZ6icG5WEavRE5UoemIkusUOiK3vuJ1DgNRWZc#Echobox=1579765233" on South China Morning Post, 23 January 2020.

Tony Abbott photo

“For me, as for every leader of the Liberal Party, encouragement for the family, support for small business and respect for values and institutions that have stood the test of time are at the heart of my public life.”

Tony Abbott (1957) Australian politician

Page vii of Tony Abbott's introduction to 2013 edition of his book Battlelines.
Leader of the Opposition (2009-2015), Battlelines book, (2013)

Peter Hotez photo
Noam Chomsky photo
Richard D. Wolff photo

“A worker-coop based economy—where workers democratically run enterprises, deciding what, how and where to produce, and what to do with any profits—could, and likely would, put social needs and goals (like proper preparation for pandemics) ahead of profits. Workers are the majority in all capitalist societies; their interests are those of the majority. Employers are always a small minority; theirs are the "special interests" of that minority. Capitalism gives that minority the position, profits and power to determine how the society as a whole lives or dies. That's why all employees now wonder and worry about how long our jobs, incomes, homes and bank accounts will last—if we still have them. A minority (employers) decides all those questions and excludes the majority (employees) from making those decisions, even though that majority must live with their results. Of course, the top priority now is to put public health and safety first. To that end, employees across the country are now thinking about refusing to obey orders to work in unsafe job conditions. U.S. capitalism has thus placed a general strike on today's social agenda. A close second priority is to learn from capitalism's failure in the face of the pandemic. We must not suffer such a dangerous and unnecessary social breakdown again. Thus system change is now also moving onto today's social agenda.”

Richard D. Wolff (1942) American economist

COVID-19 and the Failures of Capitalism (2020)

Richard D. Wolff photo
Richard D. Wolff photo
William Cobbett photo

“Why should they risk a public landing? Their ship would be impounded for evasion of custom duties. Their clothes would be torn off and sold as souvenirs.”

Desmond Leslie (1921–2001) British pilot, film maker, writer, and musician

Quoted in Obituary, The Telegraph https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1327100/Desmond-Leslie.html (20 Mar 2001)

Joe Biden photo
Peter Hotez photo

“There's still no road map for what you do to make a vaccine in the midst of a devastating public health outbreak.”

Peter Hotez (1958) American academic

Peter Hotez (2020) cited in " Experts scramble, but new virus vaccine may not come in time http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/Experts_scramble,_but_new_virus_vaccine_may_not_come_in_time" on Jamaica Observer, 8 February 2020.

Wendell Berry photo
Marianne Williamson photo
Marianne Williamson photo
Marianne Williamson photo
Marianne Williamson photo
Anthony Fauci photo

“It's really, really tough because you have to be honest with the American public and you don't want to scare the hell out of them. And then other times, in attempts to calm people down, [leaders] have had people be complacent about it. This is particularly problematic in a ‘gotcha” town like Washington.”

Anthony Fauci (1940) American immunologist and head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

About the 2020 coronavirus pandemic in the United States, quoted in 'You don't want to go to war with a president' https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/03/anthony-fauci-trump-coronavirus-crisis-118961, 3 March 2020, Politico.

Deng Feng-Zhou photo

“Public servants are not entitled to abuse their power to do anything illegal.
Writers are not supposed to misuse their flair to elicit evil thoughts.
Professionals are never easy to cultivate.
Immoral is one when he applies his knowledge to the breachment of morality and law.”

Deng Feng-Zhou (1949) Chinese poet, Local history writer, Taoist Neidan academics and Environmentalist.

(zh-TW) 持槍作盜進行侵,利筆文章誨殺淫。
技藝人才培不易,植因造業孽緣深。

"Professional morality" (專業道德)

Source: Deng Feng-Zhou, "Deng Feng-Zhou Classical Chinese Poetry Anthology". Volume 6, Tainan, 2018: 84.

Anthony Trollope photo
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton photo

“[I]t will not do to act as if the moral question was not the supreme question in public life, and, in a sense, the vera causa of party conflict.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

Letter to William Ewart Gladstone (21 November 1891), quoted in J. N. Figgis and R. V. Laurence (eds.), Selections from the Correspondence of the First Lord Acton, Vol. I (1917), p. 257
1890s

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn photo
Antonin Scalia photo
Ellen Brown photo

“Money might... indeed become a servant of humanity, transformed from a tool of oppression into a means of securing common prosperity. But first the central bank needs to become a public servant. It needs to be made a public utility, responsive to the needs of the people and the economy.”

Ellen Brown (1945) American writer

The Fed’s “Emergency Measures” Are Becoming the New Normal, TruthOut https://truthout.org/articles/qe-forever-the-feds-dramatic-about-face/ (27 February 2019)

Zach Braff photo

“I love queers as much as the next guy, I just don't think I should have to sit beside them on public transport.”

Zach Braff (1975) American actor, director, screenwriter, producer

Zach Braff on Homosexuals

Arundhati Roy photo

“Are democratic governments accountable to the people who elected them? And, critically, is the public in democratic countries responsible for the actions...?”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

Arundhati Roy: Tide? Or Ivory Snow? Public Power in the Age of Empire, Speech, San Francisco, California https://www.democracynow.org/2004/8/23/public_power_in_the_age_of (16 August 2004)
Speeches

Florence Nightingale photo
Albert Ho photo

“It's a forced disappearance...All those who have disappeared are related to the Causeway Bay bookshop and this bookshop was famous, not only for the sale, but also for the publication and circulation of a series of sensitive books.”

Albert Ho (1951) Hong Kong politician

Source: January 6, 2016 Briton confirmed missing as mystery deepens over Hong Kong booksellers https://edition.cnn.com/2016/01/05/asia/hong-kong-china-missing-booksellers/index.html