Public People Quotes & Sayings

As an artist who lives here and wants a more sophisticated engagement between local social dynamics and global discourse, it's great to see that reflected via the relationships we've developed with our customers. For some people it's a political act to eat from us three days a week because they recognize they are financially supporting the premise of the project each time they come. 95% of our annual revenue is purely from the public via food sales. — Jon Rubin

It is unlikely that it was the intention of the founders to give any public official the ability to thwart the will of the people. Although they may have been concerned about mob rule and wanted a judicial system that would prevent that, they also recognized that in many other countries it was assumed that the ruling class always knew better than the people, and they wanted no part of such a system. — Ben Carson

By extrapolating a little from Freud, it becomes possible to think of nationalism as a kind of narcissism. A nationalist takes the neutral facts about a people - their language, habitat, culture, tradition and history- and turns these facts into a narrative, whose purpose is to illuminate the self-consciousness of a group, to enable them to think of themselves as a nation with a claim to self-determination. A nationalist, in other words, takes "minor differences"- indifferent in themselves- and transforms them into major differences. For this purpose, traditions are invented, a glorious past is gilded and refurbished for public consumption, and a people who might not have thought of themselves as a people at all suddenly begin to dream of themselves as a nation. — Michael Ignatieff

It's something that I know how to do because I taught for a very long time, so I can do it, and I feel a responsibility to do it - for instance, in this situation, where I'm touring specifically for this period of time. But most writers are not public people. There are a few writers out there who really enjoy it and are good at it, and can both work and do that at the same time, but I'm not one of those people. — Alice Sebold

Major export is people who are funny and smart, who have advanced degrees, who read on public transportation. — Jennifer DuBois

I don't want to see any religious people in public office because they're working for another boss. — Frank Zappa

Real estate sales was perfect training for the experience to go into public life because you learn to accept rejection, learn to meet new people, learn to work with people and find common ground. That's the way you sell houses ... that's also the way you win over constituency. — Johnny Isakson

The view that we know less than we thought we knew about how to change the human condition came, in time, to be called neoconservatism. Many ... , myself included, disliked the term because we did not think we were conservative, neo or paleo. (I voted for John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey and worked in the latter's presidential campaign.) It would have been better if we had been called policy skeptics; that is, people who thought it was hard, though not impossible, to make useful and important changes in public policy. — James Q. Wilson

A public library is the most democratic thing in the world. What can be found there has undone dictators and tyrants: demagogues can persecute writers and tell them what to write as much as they like, but they cannot vanish what has been written in the past, though they try often enough ... People who love literature have at least part of their minds immune from indoctrination. If you read, you can learn to think for yourself. — Doris Lessing

Well, all the President is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing and kicking people to get them do what they are supposed to do anyway. Truman — David McCullough

My political curiosity, exclusive of my anxious solicitude for the public welfare, leads me to ask who authorized them (the framers of the Constitution) to speak the language of 'We, the People,' instead of 'We, the States'? — Patrick Henry

I used to be incredibly afraid of public speaking. I started with five people, then I'd speak to 10 people. I made it up to 75 people, up to 100, and now I can speak to a very large group, and it feels similar to speaking to you one-on-one. — Robin S. Sharma

Sometimes, in public life, people ask inappropriate, off-the-wall kinds of questions, don't they? — Hillary Clinton

King's response to our crisis can be put in one word: revolution. A revolution in our priorities, a reevaluation of our values, a reinvigoration of our public life and a fundamental transformation of our way of thinking and living that promotes a transfer of power from oligarchs and plutocrats to everyday people and ordinary citizens. — Cornel West

I think behind closed doors people behave differently no matter what period we're looking at, because people have to stand up straight in public but can slouch behind closed doors - can you imagine wearing those corsets? — Brenda Blethyn

For Jefferson, there was one step crucial to creating a genuine natural aristocracy. The poor and rich had to have equal access to a good education. That's why, despite being soemthing of a liberatarian, he repeatedly proposed that the state pay for universal primary education as well as fund education at later stages. He was met with opposition from many quarters, mostly those wary of big government or highter taxes. Yet interestingly, one of this most ardent supporters was an old friend and political opponent, the conservative John Adams. "The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people, and must be willing to bear the expenses of it," Adams wrote. "There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people. — Fareed Zakaria

It is well established among us that you may hold up your head in polite society with a public lie in your mouth or other people's money in your pocket or innocent blood on your hands, but not with dishwater on your hands or mud on your shoes. — Wendell Berry

The stability of global financial markets is a public good. If governments fail to protect this public good, then those who suffer are the working people of the world whose jobs, whose homes, and whose standard of living depends on it. — Kevin Rudd

We are in a movement that must not fade away. The bosses are you. The people in Washington are public servants, and they serve you. — Jeff Sessions

It just makes it even harder for people to even approach the (open source) side, when they then end up having to worry about public humiliation. — Linus Torvalds

You make a film and you can't really pick the way it's put to the public. You control the content, but the way it's marketed, or the poster, or what they're telling the public about the film, it's beyond you. Some people don't even see them, because they think they already know it. That can be frustrating, when something you've done is marketed in a way you think is antithetical to what it is. — Richard Linklater

I had planned to spend my 40s continuing my public service and starting a family. I thought that by fighting for the people I cared about and loving those close to me, I could leave the world a better place. — Gabrielle Giffords

For neo-conservatism is a quintessentially Jewish project: a re-sanctification in everyday life of the core values of western civilisation, and the achievement of human potential through virtuous practice. The neo-cons' crucial insight is that public signals through law, custom and tradition are the key to getting people to behave well. And that is a Jewish insight. — Melanie Phillips

You learn in America to speak two ways. You learn in public discourse not to be very specific about your religious life. Or, if we talk about it, we'll find a secular way of doing it that will not be offensive to people of non-belief. So, that you go through life with these alternate voices. — Richard Rodriguez

According to most studies, people's number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you're better off in the casket than doing the eulogy. — Jerry Seinfeld

The capitalist can only make a whole people go to war ... by capturing the popular will. The only prophylactic against that situation is to make the public aware of the way in which it is being misled. — Norman Angell

Everything I give, pretty much, is public. Not every donor wants to - or is willing to get the kind of abuse and attacks that we do, or death threats, so they're not willing to have their names out. I think the other side is pushing for that because they want to intimidate people so they won't oppose it. — Charles Koch

Sleeping is one of the more private aspects of parenting; it happens in a quiet room, whereas eating is a more public aspect of parenting. Other people can see it and compare it to what their kids eat. — Adam Mansbach

Most people don't understand that being in the public eye is emotionally exhausting. It takes a lot out of you. — Tabitha King

She'd been a beautiful woman in her day, delicate and trim, blue-eyed and fair-haired. There was a certain power beautiful mothers held over there less beautiful daughters. Even at seventy-four, with a limp from a hip replacement, Margaret could still enter a room and fill it like perfume. Josey could never do that. The closest she ever came was the attention she used to receive when she pitched legendary fits in public when she was young. But that was making people look at her for all the wrong reasons. — Sarah Addison Allen

Funny how nobody talks on the tubes, isn't it? I rarely catch the tube myself, or lifts. Confined spaces, everybody shuts down. Why is that? Perhaps we think everybody on the tube is a potential psychopath or a drunk,so we close down and pretend to read a book or something. — John Hannah

One of the very few valid criticisms of Queen Victoria is that she was not sufficiently concerned with improvement of the conditions in which a great mass of her subjects passed their lives. She lived through an age of profound social change, but neither public health, nor housing, nor the education of her people, nor their representation, engaged much of her time. — Cecil Woodham-Smith

For more than a decade, the United States had been giving large-scale military aid to the French colonialists, and then to the American-installed but authoritarian South Vietnamese government, to fight nationalists and communists in Vietnam. More than 23,000 U.S. military advisers were there by the end of 1964, occasionally engaging in combat. On the other side of the world, the American public knew and cared little about the guerrilla war. In fact, few knew exactly where Vietnam was. Nevertheless, people were willing to go along when their leaders told them that action was essential to resist communist aggression. — Edward S. Greenberg

Too many people hold the idea that psychopaths are essentially killers or convicts. The general public hasn't been educated to see beyond the social stereotypes to understand that psychopaths can be entrepreneurs, politicians, CEOs and other successful individuals who may never see the inside of a prison. — Robert D. Hare

A work of art does not need an explanation. The work has to speak for itself. The work may be subject to many interpretations, but only one was in the mind of the artist. Some artists say to make the work readable for the public is an artist's responsibility, but I don't agree with that. The only responsibility to be absolutely truthful to the self. My work disturbs people and nobody wants to be disturbed They are not fully aware of the effect my work has on them, but they know it is disturbing. — Louise Bourgeois

With each passing year, people of faith grow increasingly distressed by the hostility of public institutions toward religious expression. We have witnessed the steady erosion of the time-honored rights of religious Americans - both as individuals and as communities - to practice what they believe in the public square. — Ralph E. Reed Jr.

In a public dialogue with Salman in London he [Edward Said] had once described the Palestinian plight as one where his people, expelled and dispossessed by Jewish victors, were in the unique historical position of being 'the victims of the victims': there was something quasi-Christian, I thought, in the apparent humility of that statement. — Christopher Hitchens

Sometimes when I observe contemporary U.S. culture, with its hard fronts and nasty culture wars, I have a strange sense that I've seen something like it before - in the Communist and semitotalitarian state in which I grew up. The issues and positions are very different, but the spirit is strangely familiar. In all public discussion, there was a party line that people had to toe; if you diverged, you were deemed disloyal and suspected of betraying the cause. I sense a similar spirit today among both progressives and conservatives in the United States when it comes to many hot-button issues, including Islam. — Miroslav Volf

The United States supports the reintegration of people who have fought with the Taliban into Afghan society provided they: one, renounce al Qaeda, two, lay down their arms and renounce violence, and three, participate in the public political life of the country in accordance with the constitution. — Richard Holbrooke

It's the real thing at last. A new type of man: and it's people like you who've got to begin to make him." "That's my trouble. Don't think it's false modesty, but I haven't yet seen how I can contribute." "No, but we have. You are what we need: a trained sociologist with a radically realistic outlook, not afraid of responsibility. Also, a sociologist who can write." "You don't mean you want me to write up all this?" "No. We want you to write it down - to camouflage it. Only for the present, of course. Once the thing gets going we shan't have to bother about the great heart of the British public. We'll make the great heart what we want it to be. But in the meantime, it does make a difference how things are put. — C.S. Lewis

I never knew where I was going to end up when I started film. I didn't start film to be famous. Of course, it's a public medium, and of course we chose a public medium because we like people to pay attention to the work that we're doing. But I didn't know what I was going to end up. — Amy Seimetz

Talking about morality can be offensive. Morality is a politically incorrect subject. Many people are genuinely offended if someone speaks of morality and family values. It is okay if you talk about your sexual fantasies and deviances. This is called "liberation". But you would be frowned at if you talk about morality in public. Then you'd be accused of trying to impose your values on others. — Ali Sina

Privatization is a neoliberal and imperialist plan. Health can't be privatized because it is a fundamental human right, nor can education, water, electricity and other public services. They can't be surrendered to private capital that denies the people from their rights. — Hugo Chavez

Free trade has been proven, time and again, as a reliable path to economic development. It pushes the public and private sectors alike toward greater accountability and transparency. It lifts people out of poverty, and while it can force unsettling changes on a society, those changes prove to be worthwhile in a very short time. — Jonah Goldberg

When we think "prophetic" we need not always think grandly about public tasks. The prophetic task needs to be done wherever there are men and women who will yield to the managed prose future offered them by the king. So, we may ask, if we are to do that alternative constructive task of imagination, if we are to reach more than the most surface group prepared to be "religious," where do we begin? What I propose is this: The royal consciousness leads people to numbness, especially to numbness about death. It is the task of prophetic ministry and imagination to bring people to engage their experiences of suffering to death. — Walter Brueggemann

We understand that as public figures, we are a target for people who have nothing to lose in their quest for fame and easy money, ... preposterous, slanderous and defamatory lies. — Emilio Estefan

Far too many people have been swept into the post-9/11 system of fear that is the basis of all public policy these days. — Bob Barr

If, two people have good minds and they're looking at problems, if they agree all the time it means one of them is not thinking. If they disagree all the time, it means one of them is not thinking. They're just allowing their political position to dictate their position on an issue. And I think that's unhealthy. And the public knows better. — William J. Clinton

As far as other important people go, university president Richard Levin believes "there are many ways to contribute to the well-being of society, and there are many forms of public service." He rejects the notion that "people who choose a business career aren't interested in being public-spirited," asserting that "what's outstanding about Yale graduates is that whatever career they choose, they end up being active participants in the civic life of the communities in which they live. — Marina Keegan

The prison has become a black hole into which the detritus of contemporary capitalism is deposited. Mass imprisonment generates profits as it devours social wealth, and thus it tends to reproduce the very conditions that lead people to prison. There are thus real and often quite complicated connections between the deindustrialization of the economy - a process that reached its peak during the 1980s - and the rise of mass imprisonment, which also began to spiral during the Reagan-Bush era. However, the demand for more prisons was represented to the public in simplistic terms. More prisons were needed because there was more crime. Yet many scholars have demonstrated that by the time the prison construction boom began, official crime statistics were already falling. — Angela Y. Davis

Current public diplomacy and foreign policy making reduces the role of American citizens to mere spectators. The USIA's model of democracy and the free market is promoted as the superpower version of economic globalization, packaged and ready for shipping to clients throughout the world. In this version, foreign capital flows freely while the movement of people, particularly the world's poor, is strictly controlled. Such a commercial package speaks first and foremost for government 'partners,' the Fortune 500 corporations, which are the primary beneficiaries as well as the bankrollers of the American political process. This is a packaged story of America that is incomplete and undemocratic. Where do workers and communities fit into the story? How do private citizens play a part in building dialogue across cultures? — Nancy Snow

Most poor people in America were like Arleen: they did not live in public housing or apartments subsidized by vouchers. Three in four families who qualified for assistance received nothing. — Matthew Desmond

The designer of today re-establishes the long-lost contact between art and the public, between living people and art as a living thing. — Bruno Munari

From a social psychological standpoint, the selfie phenomenon seems to stem from two basic human motives. The first is to attract attention from other people. Because people's positive social outcomes in life require that others know them, people are motivated to get and maintain social attention. By posting selfies, people can keep themselves in other people's minds. In addition, like all photographs that are posted on line, selfies are used to convey a particular impression of oneself. Through the clothes one wears, one's expression, staging of the physical setting, and the style of the photo, people can convey a particular public image of themselves, presumably one that they think will garner social rewards. — Mark R. Leary

I think it's only in a crisis that Americans see other people. It has to be an American crisis, of course. If two countries fight that do not supply the Americans with some precious commodity, then the education of the public does not take place. But when the dictator falls, when the oil is threatened, then you turn on the television and they tell you where the country is, what the language is, how to pronounce the names of the leaders, what the religion is all about, and maybe you can cut out recipes in the newspaper of Persian dishes. — Don DeLillo

Jobs had not tempered his way of dealing with employees. "He applied charm or public humiliation in a way that in most cases proved to be pretty effective," Tribble recalled. But sometimes it wasn't. One engineer, David Paulsen, put in ninety-hour weeks for the first ten months at NeXT. He quit when "Steve walked in one Friday afternoon and told us how unimpressed he was with what we were doing." When Business Week asked him why he treated employees so harshly, Jobs said it made the company better. "Part of my responsibility is to be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected." But he still had his spirit and charisma. There were plenty of field trips, visits by akido masters, and off-site retreats. — Walter Isaacson

What happened in the 80's was that all the men died of AIDS. That was a particularly depressing time because so many people passed away and it was a very desperate and lonely time, so I think a lot of people felt that we were somehow, unreceived. Not only by the disease but also by the public image of the disease. It really gave homophobia a real shot in the arm and changed the way people viewed gays, queers. It became an entirely different atmosphere. — Margaret Cho

At a time when the respectable bourgeois youngsters of my generation were college freshmen, oppressed by simian sophomores and affronted with balderdash daily and hourly by chalky pedagogues, I was at large in a wicked seaport of half a million people, with a front seat at every public show, as free of the night as of day, and getting earfuls of instruction in a hundred giddy arcana, none of them taught in schools ... [But] if I neglected the humanities, I was meanwhile laying in all the worldly wisdom of a police lieutenant, a bartender, a shyster lawyer, or a midwife. — H.L. Mencken

Avoid taking a definite stand on great public issues either in the Senate or before the people. Bend your energies towards making friends of key men in all classes of voters. — Quintus Tullius Cicero

The complex ways in which we produce and reproduce the world in technologically developed societies involves the ways in which we separate ourselves into public and private persons, producing and consuming persons and so on, and the ways in which we as people negotiate and cope with those divisions. Stars are about all that, and are one of the most significant ways we have for making sense of it all. That is why they matter to us, and why they are worth thinking about. — Richard Dyer

I read used books because fingerprint-smudged and dog-eared pages are heavier on the eye. Because every book can belong to many lives. Books should be kept in public places and step out with passersby who'll onto them for a spell. Books should die like people, consumed by aches and pains, infected, drowning off a bridge together with the suicides, poked into a potbellied stove, torn apart by children to make paper boats. They should die of anything, in other words, except boredom, as private property condemned to a life sentence on a shelf. — Erri De Luca

Unlike the Medicare provisions, which were brought in by negotiation between the two principal parties, 'Obamacare' was the initiative of a single party, did not have the consent of the opposition and was concealed within 2,000 pages of legislative jargon that was never properly explained either to the public or to the members of Congress. Not surprisingly, therefore, the legislation has led to a polarization of opinion and a breakdown in the political process, each side claiming to represent the interests of the people, but neither side convinced that 'the people' includes those who did not vote for it. — Roger Scruton

It took a lot of guts to change it and say 'I don't like the life that I'm living and I don't like the swimmer I am', so let's change it completely and say 'Look, I've got to learn to love myself'. And that's been a really hard thing to do because when you've done a performance that you're not proud of and the public and the media have criticized you ... people are really quick to make judgements so it was tough to say 'Well I don't care what you have to say. I'm going to do this for myself and if you don't like me after this, well then, it's too bad'. — Leisel Jones

There are some people whose opinion I value and respect and it would be very bothersome if I forfeited their respect. But the general public? I'm not preoccupied with the opinions of others. — Conrad Black

In a city of twenty million like New York, there might be one or two terrorists. Maybe ten of them at the outside. 10/20,000,000 = 0.00005 percent. One twenty-thousandth of a percent. That's pretty rare all right. Now, say you've got some software that can sift through all the bank records, or toll pass records, or public transit records, or phone call records in the city and catch terrorists 99 percent of the time. In a pool of twenty million people, a 99 percent accurate test will identify two hundred thousand people as being terrorists. But only ten of them are terrorists. To catch ten bad guys, you have to haul in and investigate two hundred thousand innocent people. — Cory Doctorow

I don't dislike rappers or hip-hop or people who like it. I went to the Def Jam tour in Manchester in the '80s when rap was inspirational. Public Enemy were awesome. But it's all about status and bling now, and it doesn't say anything to me. — Noel Gallagher

The sober people of America are weary of the fluctuating policy which has directed the public councils. They have seen with regret and indignation that sudden changes and legislative interferences, in cases affecting personal rights, become jobs in the hands of enterprising and influential speculators, and snares to the more-industrious and less informed part of the community. They have seen, too, that one legislative interference is but the first link of a long chain of repetitions, every subsequent interference being naturally produced by the effects of the preceding. — James Madison

We have been told we cannot do this by a coarse of sentence: it will only grow louder and more dissident. we have been asked to pause for a reality check, we have been warned about offering this nation false hope, but in the unlikely story that is america there has never been anything false about hope.
nothing can stand in the way of millions of voices calling for change
the hopes of little girl who goes to a public school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of a little boy who learns on the streets of L.A. We will remember that there is something happening in America, that we are not as devided as our politics suggest, that we are one people, we are one nation and together we will begin the next great chapter in the American story with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea: YES WE CAN!
yes we can to justice and equality
yes we can to oppurtunity and prosperity — Barack Obama

Public life in this country is too damn dominated by people who'd read more if only their lips didn't get so tired. — Markham Shaw Pyle

I could never feel like that about any public issue. Sometimes I wish I could. For me, if I'm honest, politics is background, news, almost entertainment. Something you switch on and off, like the TV. What I really worry about, what I can't switch off at will is, oh, sex, or dying or losing my hair. Private things. We're private people, aren't we, our generation? We make a clear distinction between private and public life; and the important things, the things that make us happy or unhappy are private. Live is private. Property is private. Parts are private. That's why the young radicals call for fucking in the streets. It's not just a cheap shock-tactic. It's a serious revolutionary proposition. — David Lodge

People have only two or three adjectives to describe people in the public eye. And that's okay. As long as those adjectives aren't train wreck, mess, terrible. — Taylor Swift

Every sensitive person should make his point of view let known, at least, to one person other than yourself on every subject that gets you worked up. This is basic to every social being. And like theory of vibration it gains momentum as the time passes. However, it also happens that it can turn out to be wasted effort. Because we are common people. The fact that we are of no consequence, so are our utterances and statements, makes us indifferent to a lot of issues and situations around us. However, in a set-up we live in, it becomes incumbent upon every educated individual to air our views for the general good of all. Like wise, as public-spirited individuals we must believe in doing something, rather than grumble at home over the breakfast table that the World is not a pleasant place. After all, lighting a lamp is wiser than cursing the darkness. — Manasa Rao

Public service must be more than doing a job efficiently and honestly. It must be a complete dedication to the people and to the nation. — Margaret Chase Smith

Stars are almost always people that want to make up for their own weaknesses by being loved by the public and I'm no exception to that. — George Michael

The need for general scientific understanding by the public has never been larger, and the penalty for scientific illiteracy never harsher ... Lack of scientific fundamentals causes people to make foolish decisions about issues such as the toxicity of chemicals, the efficacy of medicines, the changes in the global climate. — Peter Agre

Google controls two-thirds of the US search market. Almost three-quarters of all Internet users have Facebook accounts. Amazon controls about 30% of the US book market, and 70% of the e-book market. Comcast owns about 25% of the US broadband market. These companies have enormous power and control over us simply because of their economic position. They all collect and use our data to increase their market dominance and profitability. When eBay first started, it was easy for buyers and sellers to communicate outside of the eBay system because people's e-mail addresses were largely public. In 2001, eBay started hiding e-mail addresses; in 2011, it banned e-mail addresses and links in listings; and in 2012, it banned them from user-to-user communications. All of these moves served to position eBay as a powerful intermediary by making it harder for buyers and sellers to take a relationship established inside of eBay and move it outside of eBay. — Bruce Schneier

People bicker so and have such rows. Even if they're fond of each other, they still seem to have rows and not to mind a bit whether they have them in public or not. — Agatha Christie

The public is not to see where power lies, how it shapes policy, and for what ends. Rather, people are to hate and fear one another. — Noam Chomsky

Most people won't have opportunity to do full-time service, but those lucky enough to have monetary wealth or some spare time really can make an enormous difference. As someone who's now in the public sector, and is seeing up-close-and-personal the real impact of what we do and what we give, I can tell you: every dollar and every volunteer help, in more ways than you can count. — Michael Bloomberg

It seemed my whole life was composed of these disjointed fractions of time, hanging around in one public place and then another, as if I were waiting for trains that never came. And, like one of those ghosts who are said to linger around depots late at night, asking passersby for the timetable of the Midnight Express that derailed twenty years before, I wandered from light to light until that dreaded hour when all the doors closed and, stepping from the world of warmth and people and conversation overhead, I felt the old familiar cold twist through my bones again and then it was all forgotten, the warmth, the lights; I had never been warm in the life, ever. — Donna Tartt

More and more, for the stupid little kid, that was the idea . . .
That if enough people looked at you, you'd never need anybody's attention ever again.
That if someday you were caught, exposed, and revealed enough, then you'd never be able to hide again. There'd be no difference between your public and your private lives.
That if you could acquire enough, accomplish enough, you'd never want to own or do another thing.
That if you could eat or sleep enough, you'd never need more.
That if enough people loved you, you'd stop needing love.
That you could ever be smart enough.
That you could someday get enough sex.
These all became the little boy's new goals. The illusions he'd have for the rest of his life. These were all the promises he saw in the fat man's smile — Chuck Palahniuk

The Constitution is the fundamental rule for people to live in society. If the rule no longer suits the lives of the general public due to changing times, it should be changed. That goes for regular laws as well as the Constitution. — Ichiro Ozawa

We have tried you good people of the public and we have found you wanting. — Rose Schneiderman

Not only our political system is broken, but how we do business and have public discourse with one another. The system in Hollywood, specifically, is not depicting people of color; we're not even talking about Asian Americans or Latino Americans; we're not even getting into that question. — Isaiah Washington

Otto Piper points out that "there is always an element of mistrust implied in the marriage contract."2 The reason we promise to love each other "till death do us part" is precisely because our society knows that such a promise will be sorely tried - otherwise, the promise wouldn't be necessary! We don't make public promises that we will regularly nourish our bodies with food or buy ourselves adequate clothing. Everyone who enters the marriage relationship will come to a point where the marriage starts to "rub" somewhat adversely. It is for these times that the promise is made. Anticipating struggle, God has ordained a remedy, holding us to our word of commitment. In this struggle we become nobler people. — Gary L. Thomas

The fact is that I have lived with the belief that power, any kind of power, was the one thing forbidden to poets ... Power requires that the inner person never be unmasked. No, we poets have to go naked. And since this is so, it is better that we stay private people; a naked public person would be rather ridiculous, what? — May Sarton

Ours is the only civilization in history which has enshrined mediocrity as its national ideal. Others have been corrupt, but leave it to us to invent the most undistinguished of corruptions. No orgies, no blood running in the street, no babies thrown off cliffs. No, we're sentimental people and we horrify easily. True, our moral fiber is rotten. Our national character stinks to high heaven. But we are kinder than ever. No prostitute ever responded with a quicker spasm of sentiment when our hearts are touched. Nor is there anything new about thievery, lewdness, lying, adultery. What is new is that in our time liars and thieves and whores and adulterers wish also to be congratulated by the great public, if their confession is sufficiently psychological or strikes a sufficiently heartfelt and authentic note of sincerity. Oh, we are sincere. I do not deny it. I don't know anybody nowadays who is not sincere. — Walker Percy

Like a lot of people, I'm interested in public service and want to do as much as I can to change the direction of this country and will give some consideration to that after midterm elections. — John Thune

There is something strikingly different about the quality of photographs of that time. It has nothing to do with age or colour, or the feel of paper ... In modern family photographs the camera pretends to circulate like a friend, clicking its shutters at those moments when its subjects have disarranged themselves to present to it those postures which they would like to think of as informal. But in pictures of that time, the camera is still a public and alien eye, faced with which people feel bound either to challenge the intrusion by striking postures of defiant hilarity, or else to compose their faces, and straighten their shoulders, not always formally, but usually with just that hint of stiffness which suggests a public face. — Amitav Ghosh

I think that language matters. I think that people who are in public life have an opportunity to help the public understand issues and understand the urgency of issues. And to that extent, I think it is important how issues are talked about. — Maya Harris

People say the media is feeding the public's hunger for celebrity news, but that's the drug pusher's mentality. I don't think anybody would be pining for news about Angelina Jolie's babies if it weren't being given to them in the first place. — Patti Smith

Majorities can be wrong, majorities can overrule rights of minorities. If majorities ruled, we could still have slavery. 80% of the population once enslaved 20% of the population. While run by majority rule that is ok. That is very flawed notion of what democracy is. Democracy has to take into account several things - proportionate requirements of people, not just needs of the majority, but also needs of the minority. Majority, especially in societies where the media manipulates public opinion, can be totally wrong and evil. People have to act according to conscience and not by majority vote. — Howard Zinn

I am sure if you went back to the days of 'My Fair Lady,' they would have had one public dress rehearsal, and that is it. And in a way, I would like to go back to that. Now you have people tweeting and blogging immediately, so you may as well regard your first preview as your opening night because you are going to get reviews. — Tim Rice

The bad news for journalists today is that the media, however seriously people who are in the public eye take it, is not taken as seriously as it once was - by the public. — Alastair Campbell

I get a lot of people who will either write to me or come up in public and say, "My daughter, son, family, or I, etc. look up to you." — Atticus Shaffer

I went to a public high school and most of the comedy was coming from the black kids and the Asian kids and the Hispanic kids. And, the coolest kids to me where always the black kids. They were always fashion forward and they always dressed the coolest. They were always the best dancers, and just the coolest people. — Brett Ratner

When I was in court I was the judge; when I was out of court I wasn't. Most people didn't address me as judge when I was in public. — Steven Pacey

In Holland, we have a saying: 'A knife cuts on two sides.' With the rubber duck, I'm trying to show people what they haven't been seeing in their public space. When the rubber duck is there and when it's gone, you know. — Florentijn Hofman

The film industry has become a universal medium exercising a profound influence on the development of people's attitudes and choices, and possessing a remarkable ability to influence public opinion and culture across all social and political frontiers. — Pope John Paul II

Interfacing street sculpture in public space creates an installation environment that turns regular space into art space. Signs and people and everything around a street sculpture-they all become part of it. A two-dimensional work, being confined to surfaces, doesn't have as much of a capacity. — Mark Jenkins