Quotes & Sayings About Public Works

Many of those who argue for vouchers say that they simply want to use competition to improve public education. I don't think it works that way, and I've been watching this for a longtime. — Jonathan Kozol

I like thinking of myself as invisible. I find it a very advantageous way to live. Unfortunately, its not the way the music business works. If you don't create some kind of public image, it gets created for you. — Tom Verlaine

I am a great foe of favoritism in public life, in private life, and even in the delicate relationship of an author to his works. — Joseph Conrad

Some fifteen years ago in London there was an exhibition of the works of a certain sculptor, which contained many sane and admirable pieces. Two young ladies came in one day, and flitted from flower to flower with dissatisfied air, till at last one of them caught sight of a vast seated assemblage of elliptical rhomboids which was wooing the Public under the name of Venus. Before this supreme novelty she halted, if a butterfly can halt. 'Oh, my dear,' she said, 'here she is! Here's the Venus!' And putting her head on one side, she added: 'Isn't she a pet?' Such butterflies still exist and halt before the works of novelty for novelty's sake, because they are told to by some town-crier, who must have novelty at any cost. — John Galsworthy

This consists in not taking a book into one's hand merely because it is interesting the great public at the time - such as political or religious pamphlets, novels, poetry, and the like, which make a noise and reach perhaps several editions in their first and last years of existence. Remember rather that the man who writes for fools always finds a large public: and only read for a limited and definite time exclusively the works of great minds, those who surpass other men of all times and countries, and whom the voice of fame points to as such. These alone really educate and instruct.

One can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books: bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind — Arthur Schopenhauer

Or in other works I have also projected the sound in a cube of loudspeakers. The sound can move vertically and diagonally at all speeds around the public. — Karlheinz Stockhausen

The common idea that scientists reject a theory as soon as it leads to a contradiction is just not so. When they get something that works at all they plunge ahead with it and ignore its weak spots ... scientists are just as bad as the rest of the public in following fads and being influenced by mass enthusiasm. — Vannevar Bush

My mom is a public school teacher and works with third grade students. — Jane McGonigal

We lived in a culture that denied any merit to literary works, considering them important only when they were handmaidens to something seemingly more urgent
namely ideology. This was a country where all gestures, even the most private, were interpreted in political terms. The colors of my head scarf or my father's tie were symbols of Western decadence and imperialist tendencies. Not wearing a beard, shaking hands with members of the opposite sex, clapping or whistling in public meetings, were likewise considered Western and therefore decadent, part of the plot by imperialists to bring down our culture. — Azar Nafisi

The public mind has by now so thoroughly grown out of humor with it as to make condemnation of capitalism and all its works a foregone conclusion
almost a requirement of the etiquette of discussion. — Joseph Alois Schumpeter

It is a public financing system that everybody knows is antiquated. It no longer works. Nobody can become president based on that system. — Bernie Sanders

Sis took Eva to the public library and showed her how to get a card. Every week, Eva read her way through the works of Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Anthony Trollope, Henry James and Elizabeth Gaskell. She dreamed of heroines from modest backgrounds attracting unprecedented attentions, soaring tales of love across social divides and sudden unexpected reversals of fortunes. In these pages, anything was possible, even for a girl like her. — Kathleen Tessaro

In their censures of luxury, the fathers are extremely minute and circumstantial;89 and among the various articles which excite their pious indignation, we may enumerate false hair, garments of any colour except white, instruments of music, vases of gold or silver, downy pillows (as Jacob reposed his head on a stone), white bread, foreign wines, public salutations, the use of warm baths, and the practice of shaving the beard, which, according to the expression of Tertullian, is a lie against our own faces, and an impious attempt to improve the works of the Creator. — Edward Gibbon

If they had won, all they'd have thought about was making more money, the upper class. Abendsen, he's wrong; there would be no social reform, no welfare public works plans - the Anglo-Saxon plutocrats wouldn't have permitted it." Juliana thought, Spoken like a devout Fascist. — Philip K. Dick

Because instant and credible information has to be given, it becomes necessary to resort to guesswork, rumors and suppositions to fill in the voids, and none of them will ever be rectified, they will stay on in the readers' memory. How many hasty, immature, superficial and misleading judgments are expressed every day, confusing readers, without any verification. The press can both simulate public opinion and miseducate it. Thus we may see terrorists heroized, or secret matters, pertaining to one's nation's defense, publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion on the privacy of well-known people under the slogan: "everyone is entitled to know everything." But this is a false slogan, characteristic of a false era: people also have the right not to know, and it is a much more valuable one. The right not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who works and leads a meaningful life does not need this excessive burdening flow of information. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The scientists Heartland works with demanded we host a ninth conference this year to foster a much-needed frank, honest, and open discussion of the current state of climate science and we just couldn't refuse. The public, the press, and the scientific community will all benefit from learning about the latest research and observational data that indicate climate science is anything but 'settled. — Joseph L. Bast

The performances of my works in the last 10 years are probably equal to all the previous years put together. There are so many venues now and there is a completely new public for opera that's grown up outside of the traditional core opera public. — Carlisle Floyd

In taste and imagination, in the graces of style, in the arts of persuasion, in the magnificence of public works, the ancients were at least our equals. — Thomas B. Macaulay

Let's talk about policing and public safety. Let's debate what works and what does not. We must abandon practices that do not work, and do more of the things that actually do work to save lives. — Martin O'Malley

When I grew up, there were locked cabinets in public libraries. You needed parental permission if you were under eighteen. I was let down by the overblown reputations of some hardcore fictional works. — Allan Gurganus

The "public" does not work - a sentence like "most of the American public works in the service industry" would never appear in a magazine or paper, and if a journalist were to attempt to write such a sentence, her editor would certainly change it to something else. It is especially odd since the public does apparently have to go to work: — David Graeber

My father worked for governments all his life as an engineer and public works director. — Edward Tufte

Newspapers with declining circulations can complain all they want about their readers and even say they have no taste. But you will still go out of business over time. A newspaper is not a public trust - it has a business model that either works or it doesn't. — Marc Andreessen

Since in the age of the internet we are all publishers, each of us bears some private responsibility for the public's sense of truth. If we are serious about seeking the facts, we can each make a small revolution in the way the internet works. If you are verifying information for yourself, you will not send on fake news to others. If you choose to follow reporters whom you have reason to trust, you can also transmit what they have learned to others. If you retweet only the work of humans who have followed journalistic protocols, you are less likely to debase your brain interacting with bots and trolls. We — Timothy Snyder

The Court has a special responsibility to ensure that the Constitution works in practice. While education, including the transmission of our civic values from one generation to the next, must play the major role in maintaining public confidence in the Court's decisions, the Court too must help maintain public acceptance of its own legitimacy. It can do this best by helping ensure that the Constitution remains "workable" in a broad sense of the term. Specifically, it can and should interpret the Constitution in a way that works for the people of today. — Stephen G. Breyer

For every dollar that is spent on the (boondoggle) bridge a dollar will be taken away from taxpayers. If the bridge costs $1,000,000 the taxpayers will lose $1,000, 000. They will have that much taken away from them which they would otherwise have spent on the things they needed most. — Henry Hazlitt

The American public got to see for themselves every day, all day, how this trial progressed. There's a lot of value in the public being able to see how the system works. — Lance Ito

Neoliberalism works best when there is formal electoral democracy, but when the population is diverted from the information, access, and public forums necessary for meaningful participation in decision making. — Noam Chomsky

American feminism is currently dominated by a group of wome n wh o seek to persuad e the public that American wome n are not the free creatures we thin k w e are. Th e leaders an d theorists of the women's movemen t believe that ou r society is best described as a patriarchy, a "male hegemony," a "sex/gender system" in whic h the dominan t gender works to keep wome n cowering an d submissive. The feminists wh o hold this divisive view of ou r social an d political reality believe we are in a gender war, an d they are eager to disseminate stories of atrocity that are designed to alert wome n to their plight. Th e "gender feminists" (as I shall call them) believe that all ou r institutions, from the state to the family to the grade schools, perpetuate male dominance . Believing that wome n are virtually under siege, gende r feminists naturally seek recruits to their side of the gender war. They seek support . They seek vindication. They seek ammunition. — Christina Hoff Sommers

The Council Wars era from 1983 to 1986 and the brief months from 1986 to 1987 when Mayor Washington gained control over the council were among the most dramatic periods in Chicago's history. Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, women, and homosexuals gained real power at City Hall for the first time. Opposition to Reaganomics and support for the city as a nuclear weapons-free zone were led by the mayor and his department heads, not just opposition groups. The growth machine of the old Chicago regime, which favored urban growth focused on major public works projects and development in the downtown Loop area, was replaced by a balanced program of neighborhood, as well as downtown, economic development.33 — Dick Simpson

The prosperity of a book lies in the minds of readers. Public knowledge and public taste fluctuate; and there come times when works which were once capable of instructing and delighting thousands lose their power, and works, before neglected, emerge into renown. — George Henry Lewes

A civilian-based diplomacy supports noncommercial, nonprofit, and publicly-subsidized media to counteract the corporate-controlled, for-profit, private media that dominate political discourse; and works to place media control, ownership, and lobbying at the center of public policy debate. — Nancy Snow

A good number of works owe their success to the mediocrity of their authors' ideas, which match the mediocrity of those of the general public. — Nicolas Chamfort

Assuming that a tax increase is necessary, it is clearly preferable to impose the additional cost on land by increasing the land tax, rather than to increase the wage tax - the two alternatives open to the City (of Pittsburgh). It is the use and occupancy of property that creates the need for the municipal services that appear as the largest item in the budget - fire and police protection, waste removal, and public works. The average increase in tax bills of city residents will be about twice as great with wage tax increase than with a land tax increase. — Herbert Simon

Business of blurring is fantastic. They both are playing the politics of avoidance. They avoid all the issues on corporate power, Iraq, Palestine, Israel, so on and so forth. They avoid all those. That's the politics of avoidance. All the major issues that are so much on people's minds - health care, living wage, public works, jobs - they avoid. — Ralph Nader

There are certain things in gun control that have a certain public appeal, but when you're legislating you need to look at the research on what works, what doesn't, and what really has an impact, recognizing you're never going to do away entirely with gun violence — Kim Campbell

But public works, economic protectionism, cheap money, 'deficit-financed government spending,' and 'the animal spirits of the spendthrift' in the service of boosting 'consumption demand' ... Doesn't Keynesianism simply appeal to the worst in human nature? — Ilana Mercer

The only artist who does not deserve respect is the one who works to please the public, for commercial success or for official success. — Jacques Maritain

The phenomenon of laborers staying on at the end of their contracts with big public works companies is likely the biggest single source of Chinese migration to Africa. Workers would arrive from a given locality in China and discover there was good money to be made in some corner of an Africa they had never before imagined viable. Soon, they were sending word back home about the fortunes to be made there, or the hospitality of the locals, or the wonders of the environment, or the joys of a free and relatively pressureless life. In short order, others would follow. Li — Howard W. French

The romance that has surrounded the Beat generation since the mid-Sixties has acted as a kind of sentimental glaze, obscuring its fundamentally nihilistic impulse under a heap of bogus rhetoric about liberation, spontaneity, and 'startling oases of creativity', Notwithstanding their recent media media make-over, the Beats were not Promethean iconoclasts. They were drug-abusing sexual predators and infantilized narcissists whose shamelessness helped dupe a confused and gullible public into believing that their utterances were works of genius. We have to thank Lisa Phillips and the Whitney for inadvertently reminding us of this with such vividness. If nothing else, 'Beat Culture and the New America' showed that the Beats were not simply artistic charlatans; the were -- and, in the case of those who are still with us, they remain -- moral simpletons, whose destructive influence helped fuel the cultural catastrophe with which we are now living. — Roger Kimball

He shook his head. "No, they never went. He checked and it turns out the Kavach plans are still considered active material and are still on file at Public Works." "Fantastic," said Xela. "So we can go see them." Nate shook his head. "Nope. That's where it ends. They're sealed records." Tim's eyebrows went up. "Sealed?" "Yep. The same way they seal plans for things like the Federal Building or parts of the state capitol or embassies. The guy emailed me to explain why he couldn't tell me anything. He even said he has to make a note in the file that I asked about them because of some Patriot Act thing. — Peter Clines

Let the punishments of criminals be useful. A hanged man is good for nothing; a man condemned to public works still serves the country, and is a living lesson. — Voltaire

These places tend to have row upon row of neat bookshelves, arranged nicely. They are presented attractively for the same reason that kittens are cute - so that they can draw you in, then pounce on you for the kill. Seriously. Stay away from kittens. Public libraries exist to entice. The Librarians want everyone to read their books - whether those books are deep and poignant works about dead puppies or nonfiction books about made-up topics, like the Pilgrims, penicillin, and France. In fact, the only book they don't want you to read is the one you're holding right now. — Brandon Sanderson

We stop when we reach the top, climb out, shivering in the cold and ghostly mist under wind-blasted trees, to read the sign erected by the Public Works Department: "You have reached Trumseng La, Bhutan's highest road pass. Check Your Brakes. Bash On Regardless. Thank you." — Jamie Zeppa

It is my conviction that the public always shows itself more honest in its spontaneity than do those who officially set themselves up as judges of works of art. — Igor Stravinsky

The great works of art and literature have a lot to say on how to tackle the concrete challenges of living, like how to escape the chains of public opinion, how to cope with grief or how to build loving friendships. Instead of organizing classes around academic concepts - 19th-century French literature - more could be organized around the concrete challenges students will face in the first decade after graduation. — David Brooks

Government works best under the glare of public scrutiny. Absent such scrutiny, abuses occur. — Stephen Hawking

All I'm asking for is the law that's been on the books for the last 33 years, no public funding for abortion. We are both saying the same thing, pro-life, pro-choice. Let's find the language that works for both of us so we can pass health care. — Bart Stupak

If I buy a car, I use the car, you don't, and the market for cars works pretty well. But there are many other sorts of goods, often very important goods, which are not provided well through the market. Often, these go under the heading of public goods. — Eric Maskin

At Camp One we were met by Director of Public Works Warwick Greene, grim and grimy. He has been working himself to death to make this transportation plan a success. — William Cameron Forbes

We must develop a federal program of public works, retraining, and jobs for all - so that none, white or black, will have cause to feel threatened
... There is nothing except shortsightedness to prevent us from guaranteeing an annual minimum and livable income for every American family. — Martin Luther King Jr.

It requires heavy-duty interventions: sweeping bans on polluting activities, deep subsidies for green alternatives, pricey penalties for violations, new taxes, new public works programs, reversals of privatizations - the list of ideological outrages goes on and — Naomi Klein

Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a personal God quaquaquaquaquaquaqua with white beard quaquaquaquaquaqua outside time without extension who from the heights of divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia loves us dearly with some exceptions for reasons unknown but time will tell and suffers like the divine Miranda with those who for reasons unknown but time will tell are plunged into torment plunged into fire whose fire flames if that continues and who can doubt it will fire the firmament that is to say blast hell to heaven so blue still and calm so calm with a calm which even though intermittent is better than nothing but not so fast and considering what is more that as a result of the labors left unfinished — Samuel Beckett

Polling only works in a country without a depressed, frightened populace. Where the public trusts authorities enough to tell them the truth without fear of retribution. — Rick Perlstein

Creativity builds upon the public domain. The battle that we're fighting now is about whether the public domain will continue to be fed by creative works after their copyright expires. That has been our tradition but that tradition has been perverted in the last generation. We're trying to use the Constitution to reestablish what has always been taken for granted
that the public domain would grow each year with new creative work. — Lawrence Lessig

Most families aren't all in the public eye as we are. It works as a blessing. It works in our favor. — Khloe Kardashian

There are a few obvious consequences and perhaps one subtle possibility. One obvious thing is that, to stimulate the economy, President Obama has committed to creating millions of green jobs that will leave a legacy - much as Roosevelt's public works did during the new deal. — Denis Hayes

The belief that public works necessarily create new jobs is false. If the money was raised by taxation, we saw, then for every dollar that the government spent on public works one less dollar was spent by the taxpayers to meet their own wants, and for every public job created one private job was destroyed. — Henry Hazlitt

Irrigation, unscientifically conducted, would not give us such truly wonderful mathematical fitness [as we observe in the Martian canals] ... A mind of no mean order would seem to have presided over the system we see-a mind certainly of considerably more comprehensiveness than that which presides over the various department of our own public works. — Percival Lowell

When the fountains of government [borrowing] abundance began to dry up, when through lack of funds and the impossibility of negotiating fresh loans the state was forced to check the extension of bureaucracy and to put a stop to public works, then and then only did the Italians realize what it meant to have allowed themselves to be made one of the most heavily taxed nations in the world. — John T. Flynn

History does not provide any example of capital accumulation brought about by a government. As far as governments invested in the construction of roads, railroads, and other useful public works, the capital needed was provided by the savings of individual citizens and borrowed by the government. — Ludwig Von Mises

Most satirists are indeed a public scourge; Their mildest physic is a farrier's purge; Their acrid temper turns, as soon as stirr'd, The milk of their good purpose all to curd. Their zeal begotten, as their works rehearse, By lean despair upon an empty purse. — William Cowper

Cynically but accurately put, Americans oppose public intervention or regulation if it helps others, but favor it if it helps them - take social security, disaster relief, public works projects, for example. — Jon Meacham

Although the typical abusive man works to maintain a positive public image, it is true that some women have abusive partners who are nasty or intimidating to everyone. How about that man? Do his problems result from mistreatment by his parents? The answer is both yes and no; it depends on which problem we're talking about. His hostility toward the human race may sprout from cruelty in his upbringing, but he abuses women because he has an abuse problem. The two problems are related but distinct. — Lundy Bancroft

Anyone who works is a fool. I don't work - I merely inflict myself upon the public. — Robert Morley

Public works are not accomplished by the miraculous power of a magic wand. They are paid for by funds taken away from the citizens. — Ludwig Von Mises

Despite all the public hand-wringing about negative advertising, political veterans will tell you that it persists because, more often than not, it works. But tearing down the other guy has another attraction: It can be a substitute for building much of a case for what the mudslinger will do once in office. — Robert Dallek

[ ... ] there is one inexorable law of technology, and it is this: when revolutionary inventions become widely accessible, they cease to be accessible. Technology is inherently democratic, because it promises the same services to all; but it works only if the rich are alone using it. When the poor also adopt technology, it stops working. A train used to take two hours to go from A to B; then the motor car arrived, which could cover the same distance in one hour. For this reason cars were very expensive. But as soon as the masses could afford to buy them, the roads became jammed, and the trains started to move faster. Consider how absurd it is for the authorities constantly to urge people to use public transport, in the age of the automobile; but with public transport, by consenting not to belong to the elite, you get where you're going before members of the elite do. — Umberto Eco

It's for scientists to lay out the data and lay out what they think, and then it's for the public to make up its own mind. We don't live in a priesthood where some small group imposes its views on other people - that's not the way that science works, and it's not the way a democratic society should work. — Venkatraman Ramakrishnan

Campaign finance and ethics reform only works if it curtails all special interest groups equally and does not carve out any exceptions to benefit one party or another. 'Pay to play' reform was passed to limit the influence of big spending contractors over the public officials from whom they are trying to obtain work. — Thomas Kean Jr.

Pittsburg is like Birmingham in England; at least its townspeople say so. Setting aside the streets, the shops, the houses, waggons, factories, public buildings, and population, perhaps it may be. It certainly has a great quantity of smoke hanging about it, and is famous for its iron-works. Besides the prison to which I have already referred, this town contains a pretty arsenal and other institutions. It is very beautifully situated on the Alleghany River, over which there are two bridges; and the villas of the wealthier citizens sprinkled about the high grounds in the neighbourhood, are pretty enough. We lodged at a most excellent hotel, and were admirably served. As usual it was full of boarders, was very large, and had a broad colonnade to every story of the house. — Charles Dickens

No government proposal more complicated than "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private" ever works. — P. J. O'Rourke

All of the great Disney works took works that were in the public domain and remixed them. — Lawrence Lessig

... I tell you that loneliness itself is the secret. It's a secret you cannot tell anyone. Why?
Because to confess your loneliness is to confess your failure as a human being. To confess would only cause others to pity and avoid you, afraid that what you have is catching. Your condition is caused by a lack of human relationship, and yet to admit to it only drives your possible rescuers farther away (while attracting cats).
So you attempt to hide your loneliness in public, to behave, in fact, as though you have too many friends already, and thus you hope to attract people who will unwittingly save you. But it never works that way. Your condition is written all over your face, in the hunch of your shoulders, in the hollowness of your laugh. You fool no one.
Believe me in this; I've tried all the tricks of the lonely man. — David Marusek

This is why it is not true that culture can be, even temporarily, suspended in order to make way for a new culture. Man's unbroken testimony as to his suffering and his nobility cannot be suspended; the act of breathing cannot be suspended. There is no culture without legacy, and we cannot and must not reject anything of ours, the legacy of the West. Whatever the works of the future may be, they will bear the same secret, made up of courage and freedom, nourished by the daring of thousands of artists of all times and all nations. Yes, when modern tyranny shows us that, even when confined to his calling, the artist is a public enemy, it is right. But in this way tyranny pays its respects, through the artist, to an image of man that nothing has ever been able to crush. My conclusion will be simple. It will consist of saying, in the very midst of the sound and the fury of our history: Let us rejoice. — Albert Camus

I learned in a very public setting what works and doesn't work for a healthy lifestyle. — Michael De Luca

What mothers need, as well as fathers, spouses, and the children of aging parents, is an entire national infrastructure of care, every bit as important as the physical infrastructure of roads, bridges, tunnels, broadband, parks and public works. — Anne-Marie Slaughter

No Child Left Behind ... is a giraffe with an elephant's body ... You can't take the vision of Ted Kennedy and merge it to the public policy of George Bush and come out with anything that works. — Steve Rauschenberger

In the way that scepticism is sometimes applied to issues of public concern, there is a tendency to belittle, to condescend, to ignore the fact that, deluded or not, supporters of superstition and pseudoscience are human beings with real feelings, who, like the sceptics, are trying to figure out how the world works and what our role in it might be. Their motives are in many cases consonant with science. If their culture has not given them all the tools they need to pursue this great quest, let us temper our criticism with kindness. None of us comes fully equipped. — Carl Sagan

Overprotecting intellectual property is as harmful as underprotecting it. Creativity is impossible without a rich public domain. Nothing today, likely nothing since we tamed fire, is genuinely new: Culture, like science and technology, grows by accretion, each new creator building on the works of those who came before. Overprotection stifles the very creative forces it's supposed to nurture. — Alex Kozinski

Only that when men found themselves at the mercy of forces too big for them to fight alone, government - their government - help them fight. What were the demands for railroad and bank regulation, for government loans, for public-works projects, but an expression of a belief that after men have banded together and formed a government, they have a right, when they are being crushed by conditions over which they have no control, to ask that government to extend a helping hand to them - if necessary, to fight for them, to be their champion? — Robert A. Caro

I react pragmatically. Where the market works, I'm for that. Where the government is necessary, I'm for that. I'm deeply suspicious of somebody who says, 'I'm in favor of privatization,' or, 'I'm deeply in favor of public ownership.' I'm in favor of whatever works in the particular case. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Censor, n. An officer of certain governments, employed to supress the works of genius. Among the Romans the censor was an inspector of public morals, but the public morals of modern nations will not bear inspection. — Ambrose Bierce

And the American public was able to make up their own mind whether this verdict was a just verdict or not. So I think there's a lot of value in the public being able to see how the system works or doesn't work, so I think there's a definite value there. — Lance Ito

The knowledge of an unlearned man is living and luxuriant like a forest, but covered with mosses and lichens and for the most part inaccessible and going to waste; the knowledge of the man of science is like timber collected in yards for public works, which still supports a green sprout here and there, but even this is liable to dry rot. — Henry David Thoreau

Tis one thing, brother Shandy, for a soldier to hazard his own life - to leap first down into the trench, where he is sure to be cut in pieces: - 'Tis one thing, from public spirit and a thirst of glory, to enter the breach the first man, - To stand in the foremost rank, and march bravely on with drums and trumpets, and colours flying about his ears: - 'Tis one thing, I say, brother Shandy, to do this, - and 'tis another thing to reflect on the miseries of war; - to view the desolations of whole countries, and consider the intolerable fatigues and hardships which the soldier himself, the instrument who works them, is forced (for sixpence a day, if he can get it) to undergo. — Anonymous

And one of the things I've tried to do in my first months in office is to give more Georgians - reporters and members of the general public alike - a closer look at how their government works. — Roy Barnes

Destroyed, that is, were not only men, women and thousands of children but also restaurants and inns, laundries, theater groups, sports clubs, sewing clubs, boys' clubs, girls' clubs, love affairs, trees and gardens, grass, gates, gravestones, temples and shrines, family heirlooms, radios, classmates, books, courts of law, clothes, pets, groceries and markets, telephones, personal letters, automobiles, bicycles, horses - 120 war-horses - musical instruments, medicines and medical equipment, life savings, eyeglasses, city records, sidewalks, family scrapbooks, monuments, engagements, marriages, employees, clocks and watches, public transportation, street signs, parents, works of art. "The whole of society," concludes the Japanese study, "was laid waste to its very foundations."2698 Lifton's history professor saw not even foundations left. "Such a weapon," he told the American psychiatrist, "has the power to make everything into nothing. — Richard Rhodes

Discussions of Western civilization are too often confined to works of high art that reflect a relatively narrow element of public taste and experience. — Ibn Warraq

All Renaissance drama, especially the works of Marlowe and Shakespeare, is profoundly concerned with shifting power relations within society. The individual was a new force in relation to the state. The threat of rebellion, of the overturning of established order, was forcefully brought home to the Elizabethan public by the revolt of the Earl of Essex, once the Queen's favourite. The contemporary debate questioned the relationship between individual life, the power and authority of the state, and the establishing of moral absolutes. Where mediaeval drama was largely used as a means of showing God's designs, drama in Renaissance England focuses on man, and becomes a way of exploring his weaknesses, depravities, flaws - and qualities. — Ronald Carter

Having always observed that public works are much less advantageously managed than the same are by private hands, I have thought it better for the public to go to market for whatever it wants which is to be found there; for there competition brings it down to the minimum value. — Thomas Jefferson

Leading the boom of 1838 were state governments, who, finding themselves with the unexpected windfall of a distributed surplus from the federal government, proceeded to spend the money wildly and borrow even more extravagantly on public works and other uneconomic forms of 'investment.' — Murray Rothbard

I have a recurring fantasy that one more article has been added to the Bill of Rights: the right to free access to imagination. I have come to believe that genuine democracy cannot exist without the freedom to imagine and the right to use imaginative works without any restrictions. To have a whole life, one must have the possibility of publicly shaping and expressing private worlds, dreams, thoughts and desires, of constantly having access to a dialogue between the public and private worlds. How else do we know that we have existed, felt, desired, hated, feared? — Azar Nafisi

For what justice is there in this: that a nobleman, a goldsmith, a banker, or any other man, that either does nothing at all, or, at best, is employed in things that are of no use to the public, should live in great luxury and splendour upon what is so ill acquired, and a mean man, a carter, a smith, or a ploughman, that works harder even than the beasts themselves, and is employed in labours so necessary, that no commonwealth could hold out a year without them, can only earn so poor a livelihood and must lead so miserable a life, that the condition of the beasts is much better than theirs? — Thomas More

All we are asking for is balance. I would like to think that I could walk into a public library and find not only works by Gloria Steinem but also those of Phyllis Schlafly. I would like to think a teenager could be taught in sex education that a serious alternative to abortion is teenage abstinence, or should pregnancy occur, that adoption might be preferable. I am not trying, as the ad says, to shove religion down anyone's throat. But I do think everyone has a right, and that the Christian voice is being chocked off. — Cal Thomas

I think there is a good reason why the propaganda system works that way. It recognizes that the public will not support the actual policies. Therefore it is important to prevent any knowledge or understanding of them. — Noam Chomsky

Ten years have passed since a perfect blue sky morning turned into the blackest of nights. Since then we've lived in sunshine and in shadow, and although we can never unsee what happened here, we can also see that children who lost their parents have grown into young adults, grandchildren have been born and good works and public service have taken root to honor those we loved and lost. — Michael Bloomberg

Must be frustrating being a scientist. There you are, incrementally discovering how the universe works via a series of complex tests and experiments, for the benefit of all mankind - and what thanks do you get? People call you "egghead" or "boffin" or "heretic", and they cave your face in with a rock and bury you out in the wilderness.
Not literally - not in this day and age - but you get the idea. Scientists are mistrusted by huge swathes of the general public, who see them as emotionless lab-coated meddlers-with-nature rather than, say, fellow human beings who've actually bothered getting off their arses to work this shit out. — Charlie Brooker

Self-interest, be it enlightened, works indirectly for the public good. — William H. Prescott

Eclecticism is the degree zero of contemporary general culture: one listens to reggae, watches a western, eats McDonald's food for lunch and local cuisine for dinner, wears Paris perfume in Tokyo and retro clothes in Hong Kong; knowledge is a matter for TV games. It is easy to find a public for eclectic works. — Jean-Francois Lyotard