This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"There is some good in public envy, whereas in private there is none; for public envy is as an ostracism that eclipseth men when they grow too great; and therefore it is a bridle also to great ones to keep within bounds." - Francis Bacon
"The future lies with those wise political leaders who realize that the great public is interested more in government than in politics." - Franklin D. Roosevelt, fully Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aka FDR
"An integral part of justice is the confidence which citizens have in it, and it is this which requires that proceedings shall be public." - Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
"Thus to be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great or rational whether in life or in science." - Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
"Patriotism, public opinion, parental duty, discipline, religion, morality, are only fine names for intimidation." - George Bernard Shaw
"Both houses of Congress have, by their joint Committee, requested me “To recommend to the People of the United States, a Day of Public Thanksgiving and Prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful Hearts the many Signal Favours of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a Form of Government for their Safety and Happiness”... That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks for his kind Care and Protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation; for the signal and manifold Mercies, and the favourable Interpositions of his Providence in the Course & Conclusion of the late War; for the great Degree of Tranquillity, Union, and Plenty, which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational Manner in which we have been enabled to establish Constitutions of Government for our Safety and Happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted; for the civil and religious Liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general, for all the great and various Favours which he hath been pleased to confer upon us... to enable us all, whether in public or private Stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually... to promote the Knowledge and Practice of true Religion and Virtue, and the increase of Science among them and us; and generally to grant unto all mankind such a Degree of temporal Prosperity as He alone knows to be best." - George Washington
"It is a paradox of the acquisitive society in which we now live that although private morals are regulated by law, the entrepreneur is allowed considerable freedom to use - and abuse - the public in order to make money. The American pursuit of happiness might be less desperate if the situation were reversed." -
"The public is bored by foreign affairs until a crisis arises; and then it is guided by; feelings rather than by thoughts." - Harold Nicolson, fully Sir Harold George Nicolson
"Leaders are responsible not for running public opinion polls but for the consequences of their action." - Henry Kissinger, fully Henry Alfred Kissinger
"The convictions that leaders have formed before reaching high office are the intellectual capital they will consume as long as they continue in office. There is little time for leaders to reflect. They are locked in an endless battle in which the urgent constantly gains on the important. The public life of every political figure is a continual struggle to rescue an element of choice from the pressure of circumstance." - Henry Kissinger, fully Henry Alfred Kissinger
"The public does not in the long run respect leaders who mirror its own insecurities or see only the symptoms of crises rather than the long-term trends. The role of the leader is to assume the burden of acting on the basis of a confidence in his own assessment of the direction of events and how they can be influenced. Failing that, crises will multiply, which is another way of saying that a leader has lost control over events." - Henry Kissinger, fully Henry Alfred Kissinger
"Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that is what determines, or rather, indicates, his fate." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
"Who are the really disloyal? Those who inflame racial hatreds, who sow religious and class dissensions. those who subvert the Constitution by violating the freedom of the ballot box. Those who make a mockery of majority rule by the use of the filibuster. Those who impair democracy by denying equal educational facilities. Those who frustrate justice by lynch law or by making a farce of jury trials. Those who deny freedom of speech and of the press and of assembly. Those who demand special favors against the interest of the commonwealth. Those who regard public office as a source of private gain. Those who exalt the military over the civil. Those who for selfish and private purposes stir up national antagonisms and expose the world to the ruin of war." - Henry Steele Commager
"Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent." - Henry Ward Beecher
"Only a few rare souls in a century, to whose class I make no pretension, count much in the great flow of this Republic. The life stream of this nation is the generations of millions of human particles acting under the impulses of advancing ideas and national ideals gathered from a thousand springs... We are but transitory officials in government whose duty is to keep these channels clear and to strengthen and extend these dikes. What counts toward the honor of public officials is that they sustain the national ideals upon which are patterned the design of these channels of progress and the construction of these dikes of safety." -
"Among the voluntary modes of raising... contributions, lotteries ought not to be allowed, because they increase the number of those who are poor, and involve danger to the public property." - Immanuel Kant
"A good educational system should have three purposes: it should provide all who want to learn with access to available resources at anytime in their lives; empower all who want to share what they know to find those who want to learn it from them; and finally, furnish all who want to present an issue to the public with the opportunity to make their challenge known." - Ivan Illich
"Real political issues cannot be manufactured by the leaders of political parties, and real ones cannot be evaded by political parties. The real political issues of the day declare themselves, and come out of the depths of that deep which we call public opinion." - James A. Garfield
"The men who succeed best in public life are those who take the risk of standing by their own convictions." - James A. Garfield
"Public education is a great instrument of social change... Education is a social proceeds, perhaps the most important process in determining the future of our country; it should command a far larger portion of our national income than it does today." - James Bryant Conant
"Of all the evils to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, and debts, and taxes, are the known instruments for bringing the many under the dominion of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds are added to those of subduing the force of the people! No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." - James Madison
"Publicity is the very soul of justice. It is the keenest spur to exertion, and the surest of all guards against improbity. It keeps the judge himself, while trying, under trial. Under the auspices of publicity, the cause in the court of law, and the appeal to the court of public opinion, are going on at the same time... It is through publicity alone that justice becomes the mother of security." - Jeremy Bentham
"The preservation of the means of knowledge among the lowest ranks is of more importance to the public than all the property of the rich men in the country." - John Adams
"In a community where public services have failed to keep abreast of private consumption things are very different. Here, in an atmosphere of private opulence and public squalor, the private goods have full sway." - John Kenneth Galbraith, aka "Ken"
"The culture of organization runs strongly to the shifting of problems to others – to an escape from personal mental effort and responsibility. This, in turns, becomes the larger public attitude. It is for others to do the worrying, take the action. In the world of the great organization, problems are not solved but passed on. And there is a further effect. The delegation process just cited adds ineluctably to the layers of command and to the prestige associated with command. That prestige is regularly measured by the number of individual subordinates." - John Kenneth Galbraith, aka "Ken"
"What is thought to be the responsible public opinion is, at any given time, a reflection of the needs and interests of the corporate technostructure." - John Kenneth Galbraith, aka "Ken"
"To make the people fittest to choose, and the chosen fittest to govern, will be to mend our corrupt and faulty education , to teach the people faith, not without virtue, temperance, modesty, sobriety, parsimony, justice; not to admire wealth or honor; to hate turbulence and ambition; to place every one his private welfare and happiness in the public peace, liberty and safety." - John Milton
"To tax the larger incomes at a higher percentage than the smaller, is to lay a tax on industry and economy; to impose a penalty on people for having worked harder and saved more than their neighbors. It is not the fortunes which are earned, but those which are unearned, that it is for the public good to place under limitation." - John Stuart Mill
"A man's first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart; his next, to escape the censures of the world. If the last interferes with the former, it ought to be entirely neglected; but otherwise there cannot be a greater satisfaction to an honest mind, than to see those approbations which it gives itself, seconded by the applauses of the public. A man is more sure of his conduct, when the verdict which he passes upon his own behavior is thus warranted and confirmed by the opinion of all that know him." - Joseph Addison
"Morality is made up of customs and habits. Custom makes public morality, and habit individual morality." - Joseph Joubert
"Today the children of our public schools are taught more of the history, heroes, legends, and sagas of the wold world than of the land of their birth, while they are furnished with little material on the people and institutions that are truly American." - Luther Standing Bear, aka Ota Kte or Mochunozhin
"Every generous action loves the public view; yet no theatre for virtue is equal to a consciousness of it." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"Public instruction should be the first object of government." - Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I
"As people with their freedom, the elites recognize that they cannot control the masses by force anymore; they have to control public opinions and attitudes. The more freedom you win, the more ways privileged groups—usually an amalgam of state and private powers—devise to control you." - Noam Chomsky, fully Avram Noam Chomsky
"Mass public education first was introduced in the United States in the nineteenth century as a way of training the largely rural workforce here for industry." - Noam Chomsky, fully Avram Noam Chomsky
"A boy will learn more true wisdom in a public school in a year than a private education in five. It is not from masters, but from their equals, that youth learn a knowledge of the world." - Oliver Goldsmith
"Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no lies." - Oliver Goldsmith
"My opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual; and that this is the power upon which he who would act rationally either in public or private life must have his eye fixed." - Plato NULL
"Perfect wisdom hath four parts, vis., wisdom, the principle of doing things aright; justice, the principle of doing things equally in public and private; fortitude, the principle of not flying danger, but meeting it; and temperance, the principle of subduing desires and living moderately." - Plato NULL
"The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." - Plato NULL
"Poverty is dishonorable, not in itself, but when it is a proof of laziness, intemperance, luxury, and carelessness; whereas in a person that is temperate, industrious, just and valiant, and who uses all his virtues for the public good, it shows a great and lofty mind." - Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
"A mere law to give all men equal rights is but useless, if the poor man must sacrifice those rights to their debts, and, in the very seats and sanctuaries of equality, the courts of justice, the offices of state, and the public discussions, be more than anywhere at the beck and bidding of the rich." - Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
"What most of all enables a man to serve the public is not wealth, but content and independence; which, requiring no superfluity at home, distracts not the mind from the common good." - Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
"It is not strange at all that the spread of divorce in a society is accompanied by a diminishing of public morality in all sectors… True love does not exist if it is not faithful. And it cannot exist if it is not honest. Neither can it be in the concrete vocation of matrimony if there is no full promise that lasts until death. Only indissoluble matrimony will be firm and lasting support for the familial community." - Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL
"Our flag stands for "liberty and justice for all." Our flag must never be misused or defiled as a bandana for war crimes, as a gag against the people's freedom of speech and conscience or as a fig leaf to hide the shame of charlatans in high public office, who violate our Constitution, our laws and our founding fathers' framework for accountable, responsive government." - Ralph Nader
"It is very easy in the world to live by the opinion of the world. It is very easy in solitude to be self-centered. But the finished man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. I knew a man of simple habits and earnest character who never put out his hands nor opened his lips to court the public, and having survived several rotten reputations of younger men, honor came at last and sat down with him upon his private bench from which he had never stirred." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The builder of heaven has not so ill constructed his creature as that the religion, that is, the public nature, should fall out: the public and the private element, like north and south, like inside and outside, like centrifugal and centripetal, adhere to every soul, and cannot be subdued except the soul is dissipated. God builds his temple in the heart on the ruins of churches and religions." - Ralph Waldo Emerson