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American public opinion, as you can see in the polls, radically changed from being against airstrikes to being heavily in favor that [President Obama] decided to do airstrikes. This is a classic example of leading from behind where he waits for public opinion. And now it's the public who's demanding he do something.
Charles KrauthammerApparently almost anyone can do a better job of educating children than our so-called 'educators' in the public schools. Children who are home-schooled by their parents also score higher on tests than children educated in the public schools. ... Successful education shows what is possible, whether in charter schools, private schools, military schools or home-schooling. The challenge is to provide more escape hatches from failing public schools, not only to help those students who escape, but also to force these institutions to get their act together before losing more students and jobs.
Thomas SowellThe public does not like you to mislead or represent yourself to be something you're not. And the other thing that the public really does like is the self-examination to say, you know, I'm not perfect. I'm just like you. They don't ask their public officials to be perfect. They just ask them to be smart, truthful, honest, and show a modicum of good sense.
Ann RichardsOwnership by delegation is a contradiction in terms. When men say, for instance (by a false metaphor), that each member of the public should feel himself an owner of public property-such as a Town Park-and should therefore respect it as his own, they are saying something which all our experience proves to be completely false. No man feels of public property that it is his own; no man will treat it with the care of the affection of a thing which is his own.
Hilaire BellocNow listen to the first three aims of the corporatist movement in Germany, Italy and France during the 1920s. These were developed by the people who went on to become part of the Fascist experience: (1) shift power directly to economic and social interest groups; (2) push entrepreneurial initiative in areas normally reserved for public bodies; (3) obliterate the boundaries between public and private interest -- that is, challenge the idea of the public interest. This sounds like the official program of most contemporary Western governments.
John Ralston SaulI am for a government rigorously frugal & simple, applying all the possible savings of the public revenue to the discharge of the national debt; and not for a multiplication of officers & salaries merely to make partisans, & for increasing, by every device, the public debt, on the principle of its being a public blessing.
Thomas JeffersonCitizens are not prepared for attacks because there is a bias against the public by nearly every expert and government official. In emergency preparedness, there is this belief that public will panic, that the public is not to be trusted, that there will be looting.
Amanda RipleyThe effort to make financial or political profit out of the destruction of character can only result in public calamity. Gross and reckless assaults on character, whether on the stump or in newspaper, magazine, or book, create a morbid and vicious public sentiment, and at the same time act as a profound deterrent to able men of normal sensitiveness and tend to prevent them from entering the public service at any price.
Theodore RooseveltLet us hold fast the great truth, that communities are responsible, as well as individuals; that no government is respectable which is not just. Without unspotted purity of public faith, without sacred public principle, fidelity, and honor, no machinery of laws, can give dignity to political society.
Daniel WebsterAn artist cannot get along without a public; and when the public is absent, what does he do? He invents it, and turning his back on his age, he looks toward the future for what the present denies.
Andre GideAnd then the conditions of safety - or lack of safety - for teachers in public schools, and the disparity between public schools and private schools is shameful.
Warren BeattyThe demise of higher education as a public good is also evident in light of the election of a number of right-wing politicians who are cutting funds for state universities and doing everything they can to turn them in training centers to fill the needs of corporations. This new and intense attack on both the social state and higher education completely undermines the public nature of what education is all about.
Henry GirouxA funny thing happened to the First Amendment on its way to the public forum. According to the Supreme Court, money is now speech and corporations are now people. But when real people without money assemble to express their dissatisfaction with the political consequences of this, theyโre treated as public nuisances and evicted.
Robert ReichI have no problem with anybody who wants to bear public witness to their religion, but I don't think they can do it on public property. They have to do it on private property. There's nothing unconstitutional about that.
John Shelby SpongDo I regret taking the company public? Yes and no. Yes, because it put us under enormous pressure for a young company to go public at that point in its history, something you never could have done in the old days.
David TalbotThe government also has to get the public rules right. That means putting a price on carbon, so the cleaner forms of energy become more competitive. As soon as that happens, a tidal wave of new capital, innovation and entrepreneurship will flood into the clean energy space - creating new jobs and opportunities for Americans of all walks of life. We did that for the internet, with public investments in the basic system through the Pentagon, followed by rules that encouraged innovation and competition. And that is why the internet took off in the United States first.
Van JonesThere are those superstars who refuse to give anything of themselves to the public except what they see on-screen. In movies and on records, it's easy to insulate one's self from the public; that's why I think I wouldn't care to be a television performer, particularly in the States, where TV stardom is so intimate.
George HarrisonThe founders of this nation understood that private morality is the fount from whence sound public policy springs. Replying to Washington's first inaugural address, the Senate stated: "We feel, sir, the force and acknowledge the justness of the observation that the foundation of our national policy should be lain in private morality. If individuals be not influenced by moral principles it is in vain to look for public virtue."
Thomas G. WestOur Republic and its press will rise or fall together," Pulitzer wrote. "An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself. The power to mould the future of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalists of future generations.
Joseph PulitzerThe people of Ontario have a right to know how their dollars are being spent. Ontario has the leanest government in Canada while still providing high-quality public services that people can rely on. Today, we are releasing the 2014 Public Sector Salary Disclosure list as part of our government's commitment to be the most open and transparent government in the country.
Deb MatthewsWhen I went to Los Angeles right after high school, I got some acting jobs, and I never, ever wanted to be an actress! Public speaking and acting make me want to vomit. But I have never been nervous singing. When it comes to public speaking, I stumble on my words, sweat, and pull at my clothes.
Kelly ClarksonWhat, after all, is the public under present conditions? What are the reasons for its eclipse? What hinders it from finding and identifying itself? By what means shall its inchoate and amorphous estate be organized into effective political action relevant to present social needs and opportunities? What has happened to the public in the century and a half since the theory of political democracy was urged with such assurance and hope?
John DeweyRight now, American government has stepped back from offering any kinds of protection for human rights and public health. And the fossil fuel industry thinks that they have just absolute free rein to go for it. The one thing in the way is public opposition. It's civil society. It's activism.
Annie LeonardThe Italian historian Armando Petrucci has done more than anyone else to revive interest in public writing. His groundbreaking Public Lettering: Script, Power, and Culture surveys the forms and uses of epigraphic writing from classical antiquity to the twentieth century.
Geoffrey NunbergAnd certainly the history of public sculpture has been disastrous but that doesn't mean it ought not to continue and the only way it even has a chance to continue is if the work gets out into the public.
Richard SerraThe job of the designer is to make things understandable, usable, accessible, enjoyable... important to a public, that involves the public.
Paula ScherWhen the public's right to know is threatened, all other public rights are threatened.
Christopher DoddGay people exist. There's nothing we can do in public policy that makes more of us exist, or less of us exist. And you guys have been arguing for a generation that public policy ought to essentially demean gay people as a way of expressing disapproval of the fact that we exist, but you don't make any less of us exist. You just are arguing in favor of more discrimination, and more discrimination doesn't make straight people's lives any better.
Rachel MaddowI think the people will - who advocate having a step back and read those public opinion polls on the front page of the newspapers all over this country saying public supports restoration in restoration of the Everglades, protection of the parks and the creation of monuments.
Bruce BabbittI think when I work with actors it's all about a process of learning to be private in public, instead of performing in public. Which is what women do: we perform, especially our sexuality.
Deborah KampmeierAll of the barriers to innovation in the energy sector are arguments for a big commitment to public investment. Only the public sector can make the kind of long-term, common investments that we need to overcome those barriers to innovation.
Ted NordhausNo one made a decision to militarize the police in America. The change has come slowly, the result of a generation of politicians and public officials fanning and exploiting public fears by declaring war on abstractions like crime, drug use, and terrorism. The resulting policies have made those war metaphors increasingly real.
Radley BalkoA much more radical conclusion . . . that, so far as I know, is shared by only a very few students of public choice [is]: that government employees or people who draw the bulk of their income from government by other means should be deprived of the vote . . . It is another example of the opening up of alternatives for investigation and the presentation of new conceivable policy options characteristic of public choice, rather than a policy that all its students favor.
Gordon TullockCharles Bernstein's pairs of jingles of 'public discourse' are 'simultaneous double narrative / the space between's the other narrative/as if they're opposite.' In the space between, outside representation but in the 'presence' of it, we are provoked to laugh. Bernstein alters our language to open a double range that's public and mind at once and inseparable, that is 'Poetry is patterned thought in search of unpatterned mind.' Girly Man is doing it.
Leslie ScalapinoFor A to sit down and think, What shall I do? is commonplace; but to think what B ought to do is interesting, romantic, moral, self-flattering, and public-spirited all at once. It satisfies a great number of human weaknesses at once. To go on and plan what a whole class of people ought to do is to feel one's self a power on earth, to win a public position, to clothe one's self in dignity. Hence we have an unlimited supply of reformers, philanthropists, humanitarians, and would-be managers-in-general of society.
William Graham SumnerFaith in public life does not mean that God tells you to bomb another country or to go get Saddam Hussein. Faith in public life means that every child, regardless of their religious belief, should have health care and be able to go to school. Because my faith saying I can bomb Iraq is the same as your faith saying you can take over a passenger plane and fly it into the World Trade Center.
Jeremiah WrightOur government rests in public opinion. Whoever can change public opinion, can change the government, practically just so much.
Abraham LincolnPublic virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics.
John AdamsThe movie stars and matinee idols are put into the public domain by photography. They become dreams that money can buy. They can be bought and thumbed more easily than public prostitutes.
Marshall McLuhanReligion is a personal, private matter and parents, not public school officials, should decide their children's religious training. We should not have teacher-led prayers in public schools, and school officials should never favor one religion over another, or favor religion over no religion (or vice versa). I also believe that schools should not restrict students' religious liberties. The free exercise of faith is the fundamental right of every American, and that right doesn't stop at the schoolhouse door.
George W. BushThe interesting point is that the polarization is not so much among the public, although there's some of that. The polarization on the immigration issue is really between the elites and the public. In other words, this is not so much a right-left issue, which it is partly.
Mark KrikorianI am for relying for internal defense on our militia solely till actual invasion, and for such a naval force only as may protect our coasts and harbors from such depredations as we have experienced; and not for a standing army in time of peace which may overawe the public sentiment; nor for a navy which, by its own expenses and the eternal wars in which it will implicate us, will grind us with public burthens and sink us under them.
Thomas JeffersonWho benefits from Wi-Fi? We all benefit from Wi-Fi. Is there an industry here? Of course, there is an industry, as well. The point is public health needs protecting. I don't think you should have to prove that there is some profiteer who might have an ulterior motive in order to protect public health.
Jill SteinDuring years of working for a living, I have experienced much of the legal and social discrimination reserved for women in this country, I have been refused service in public restaurants, ordered out of public gathering places and turned away from apartment rentals. All for the clearly stated, sole reason that I am a woman.
Gloria SteinemIf charter schools are not more successful on average than the public schools they replace, what is accomplished by demolishing public education? What is the rationale for authorizing for-profit charters or charter management organizations with high-paid executives, since their profits and high salaries are paid by taxpayers' dollars?
Diane Ravitch