Quotes about publicity (3900 quotes, page 30)

“There are a lot of people who think our job is to reassure the public every night that their home, their community and their nation is safe. I don't subscribe to that at all. I subscribe to leaving people with essentially — sorry it's a cliche — a rough draft of history. Some days it's reassuring, some days it's absolutely destructive.”

Peter Jennings (1938–2005) News anchor

Interview in Anchoring America: The Changing Face of Network News (2003) by Jeff Alan

People , Home , History , Communication

“It (a multi-party cabinet) will waste a lot of public funds, and make up for a weak and unstable Government through internal bickering, and brinkmanship that could see shifting alliance in Government, rising and falling coalition that will undermine the stability of Government. This will have adverse effects on the levels of confidence in the country which certainly will manifest itself in many forms including declining investor confidence and lowering the morale of the citizenry at large.”

Manasa Tugia Fijian politician

Parliamentary speech, 5 August 2003

Confidence , Country

“In order to have a society in which public issues can be openly and vigorously debated, it is not necessary to allow the brutalization of innocent victims.”

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

Dissenting, Snyder v. Phelps, 131 S. Ct. 1207, 1229 (2011).

“I have never known any man who could do such ample justice to his best thoughts in colloquial discussion. His perfect command over his great mental resources, the terseness and expressiveness of his language and the moral earnestness as well as intellectual force of his delivery, made him one of the most striking of all argumentative conversers: and he was full of anecdote, a hearty laugher, and, when with people whom he liked, a most lively and amusing companion. It was not solely, or even chiefly, in diffusing his merely intellectual convictions that his power showed itself: it was still more through the influence of a quality, of which I have only since learnt to appreciate the extreme rarity: that exalted public spirit, and regard above all things to the good of the whole, which warmed into life and activity every germ of similar virtue that existed in the minds he came in contact with: the desire he made them feel for his approbation, the shame at his disapproval; the moral support which his conversation and his very existence gave to those who were aiming to the same objects, and the encouragement he afforded to the fainthearted or desponding among them, by the firm confidence which (though the reverse of sanguine as to the results to be expected in any one particular case) he always felt in the power of reason, the general progress of improvement, and the good which individuals could do by judicious effort.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/101/mode/1up pp. 101-102

Perfection , Effort , Justice , People

“The publication of the Revised New Testament by the two University Presses on May 17, 1881, was the most sensational in the annals of publishing.”

Frederic G. Kenyon (1863–1952) British palaeographer and biblical and classical scholar

Source: The Story Of The Bible, Chapter VIII, The Age Of Discoveries, p. 87

Universe

“I observe an idea of establishing a branch bank of the United States in New Orleans. This institution is one of the most deadly hostility existing against the principles and form of our Constitution. The nation is at this time so strong and united in its sentiments that it cannot be shaken at this moment. But suppose a series of untoward events should occur sufficient to bring into doubt the competency of a republican government to meet a crisis of great danger, or to unhinge the confidence of the people in the public functionaries; an institution like this, penetrating by its branches every part of the union, acting by command and in phalanx may, in a critical moment, upset the government. I deem no government safe which is under the vassalage of any self-constituted authorities, or any other authority than that of the nation or its regular functionaries. What an obstruction could not this Bank of the United States, with al its branch banks, be in time of war! It might dictate to us the peace we should accept, or withdraw its aids. Ought we then to give further growth to an institution so powerful, so hostile?”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to Albert Gallatin (13 December 1803) http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/biog/lj34.htm ME 10:437 : The Writings of Thomas Jefferson "Memorial Edition" (20 Vols., 1903-04) edited by Andrew A. Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh, Vol. 10, p. 437
1800s, First Presidential Administration (1801–1805)

Hostility , War , People , Peace

“The worldview that underlay the New Testament was so different from that of the Greeks and the Romans as to be almost its opposite. It was a worldview that stressed not excellence of public achievement but the adventure of a personal journey with God… by imitating God's justice and mercy.”

Thomas Cahill (1940) American scholar and writer

Source: Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (2003), Ch.VII The Way They Went: Greco-Roman Meets Judeo-Christian

God , Justice , Personality

“It is a mistake,” he said, “to suppose that the public wants the environment protected or their lives saved and that they will be grateful to any idealist who will fight for such ends. What the public wants is their own individual comfort. We know that well enough from our experience in the environmental crisis of the twentieth century.”

Isaac Asimov book The Gods Themselves

Section 1, Chapter 7, p. 56; the book is set in the year 2100.
The Gods Themselves (1972)

Fight

“Whenever Israel faces a public relations debacle such as the Intifada or international pressure to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict, American Jewish organizations orchestrate this extravaganza called the 'new anti-Semitism.' The purpose is several-fold. First, it is to discredit any charges by claiming the person is an anti-Semite. It's to turn Jews into the victims, so that the victims are not the Palestinians any longer. As people like Abraham Foxman of the ADL put it, the Jews are being threatened by a new holocaust. It's a role reversal – the Jews are now the victims, not the Palestinians. So it serves the function of discrediting the people leveling the charge. It's no longer Israel that needs to leave the Occupied Territories; it's the Arabs who need to free themselves of the anti-Semitism.”

Norman G. Finkelstein (1953) American political scientist and author

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=9035
Other sourced statements

People , Personality

“In the city of Agra there was a large temple, in which there were numerous idols, adorned and embellished with precious jewels and valuable pearls. It was the custom of the infidels to resort to this temple from far and near several times in each year to worship the idols, and a certain fee to the Government was fixed upon each man, for which he obtained admittance. As there was a large congress of pilgrims, a very considerable amount was realized from them, and paid into the royal treasury. This practice had been observed to the end of the reign of the Emperor Shah Jahan, and in the commencement of Aurangzeb's government; but when the latter was informed of it, he was exceedingly angry and abolished the custom. The greatest nobles of his court represented to him that a large sum was realized and paid into the public treasury, and that if it was abolished, a great reduction in the income of the state would take place. The Emperor observed, 'What you say is right, but I have considered well on the subject, and have reflected on it deeply; but if you wish to augment the revenue, there is a better plan for attaining the object by exacting the jizya. By this means idolatry will be suppressed, the Muhammadan religion and the true faith will be honoured, our proper duty will be performed, the finances of the state will be increased, and the infidels will be disgraced.”

Aurangzeb (1618–1707) Sixth Mughal Emperor

'This was highly approved by all the nobles; and the Emperor ordered all the gold en and silver idols to be broken, and the temple destroyed.
Kanzul-Mahfuz (Kanzu-l Mahfuz), in: Elliot and Dowson, Vol. VIII, pp. 38 -39.
Quotes from late medieval histories

Faith , Religion , Time

“If we get public education right, everything else will follow. But if we get it wrong, not much else will matter.”

Steve Kagen (1949) American politician

"Problems We Face Together", Representative Steve Kagen, United States House of Representatives, 2007-07-21 http://kagen.house.gov/issues.shtml#edu,
Education

Education

“You who are apprentices in the field of public administration share with me who am older the task of trying to understand the new conditions in our field. Within a single generation, two world wars and a major depression have engulfed mankind. Within the past few months, the successful trial of the atomic bomb has opened the minds of the thoughtful to new possibilities, threats and coercions, and the defeat of Germany and Japan has abruptly presented the problems of peacemaking and reconstruction to war- weary masses of people. They seek release from their tragedies, deprivations and tensions, often in ways that defeat efforts to understand and attack the problems that confront them. To make progress in such a time, we must recruit widely and work as a guild, young and old together, to achieve a co-operative and cumulative effort whether in academic or governmental posts.”

John M. Gaus (1894–1969) American political scientist

Source: Reflections on public administration, 1947, p. 1; Lead paragraph

War , People , World , Way

“In the administration of justice, whether by a recognised legal Court or by persons who, although not a legal public Court, are acting in a similar capacity, public policy requires that, in order that there should be no doubt about the purity of the administration, any person who is to take part in it should not be in such a position that he might be suspected of being biassed.”

William Brett, 1st Viscount Esher (1815–1899) British lawyer, judge and politician

Allinson v. General Council of Medical Education and Registration (1894), L. R. [1894], 1 Q. B. p. 758.

Justice , Parting , Personality

“I am old enough to remember well the depression years of the middle 1930s, when economists were quite unable to agree on what public policy should be, and when President Hoover, in need of advice, turned by preference to sociologists to study and illuminate recent social trends. The circumstances of the 1980s seem similar; perhaps contemporary confusions and dismay will mark the dethronement of economics from its privileged place among the social sciences — but perhaps not.”

William H. McNeill (1917–2016) Canadian historian

Discrepancies among the Social Sciences (1981)

Study , Science

“The ideal of having a real job that you risk your soul in and make good or be damned, belongs to the heroic age of capitalist enterprise, imbued with self-righteous beliefs about hard work, thrift, and public morals. Such an ideal might still have been mentioned in public fifty years ago; in our era of risk-insured semimonopolies and advertised vices it would be met with a ghastly stillness.”

Paul Goodman book Growing Up Absurd

Source: Growing Up Absurd (1956), pp. 36-37.

Age , Soul

“As washing is very cheap, I wear two shirts at a time, and, for want of a wardrobe, I hang my great coat upon my own back, and generally keep on my boots in imitation of my namesake of Sweden. Indeed, since the snow became two feet deep (as I wanted a 'chaappin of Yale' from the public-house), I made an offer of them to Margery the maid, but her legs are too thick to make use of them, and I am told that the greater part of my parishioners are not less substantial, and notwithstanding this they are remarkable for agility.”

Charles Dodgson (bishop) Anglican bishop

Quoted in Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll (1898), p. 5

Time , Parting , Housing

“The PATRIOT Act allows Federal agents to look at public and university library patron circulation records, books checked out, magazines consulted, all subject to government scrutiny.There used to be a time in this country when we were worried whether our young people knew how to read. Now some in our government are more worried that government agents be able to find out what people are reading.”

Dennis Kucinich (1946) Ohio politician

Speech from the floor of the House of Representatives, Congressional Record (15 June 2005) http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getpage.cgi?position=all&page=H4540&dbname=2005_record.

People , Books , Universe , Time