Quotes About Public life

Is there some reason why the quality of people going into the parliament is not as high? I don't know the complete answer, but I think - in fact, I'm sure - that part of it is the increasing intrusiveness of the media - the general media and social media - into the private lives of politicians and their families.

Our public life withers when only the most extreme voices get attention. Most of all, democracy breaks down when the average person feels their voice doesn't matter; that the system is rigged in favor of the rich or the powerful or some narrow interest.

Universities are some of the few places left where a struggle for the commons, for public life, if not democracy itself, can be made visible through the medium of collective voices and social movements energized by the need for a politics and way of life counter to authoritarian capitalism.

I was quite young when my dad went into politics but, as it went on, I became self-conscious about it.

By closing our minds to the even remote possibility that a political leader with whom we nearly always disagree might have a point about a particular matter is to preemptively surrender the capacity of the mind to shape our public lives.

He embraced compromise as a necessary element of public life, engaged his political foes in the passage of important legislation, and was willing to break with the base of his own party in order to do what he thought was right, whatever the price. Quaint, yes: But it happened, in America, only a quarter of a century ago.

Jackson understood that he was expending precious political capital and untold hours battling for the Eatons' full acceptance into Washington society, but he was doing it less for Margaret than for her husband, for whom he held genuine regard and whose good sense appears to have extended to every aspect of public life except for his own marriage.   THE

passed the fundamental test of leadership: Despite all his shortcomings and all the inevitable disappointments and mistakes and dreams deferred, he left America, and the world, in a better place than it had been when he first entered the arena of public life.

my career in public life, I have had the rare privilege of being a participant in many of the defining moments of our country's democratic history. Our nation and its people have, and continue to, offer me an abundance of love, faith and affection in a measure that I find

retelling of India's political history as I have experienced it. The Dramatic Decade is the first of a trilogy; this book covers the period between 1969 and 1980. It begins with my entry into public life as a member of the Rajya Sabha and covers three epochal events—the war that led to the liberation

For all my years in public life, I have believed that America must sail toward the shores of liberty and justice for all. There is no end to that journey, only the next great voyage. We know the future will outlast all of us, but I believe that all of us will live on in the future we make.

In her darkest hours, Diana, Princess of Wales, could have used a friend like Empress Elisabeth of Austria. The two lived similar lives, a century apart.

I haven't changed, but public life has. It used to be you'd go into a restaurant, and the owner would say, 'Do you mind if I take a picture of you and put it on my wall?' Sweet and simple. Now, everyone has a camera in their pocket.

There's a lot of times that both myself and my brother wish, obviously, that we were just completely normal.

Having now finished the work assigned me, Washington solemnly said, I retire from the great theatre of Action....I here offer my Commission, and take leave of all the enjoyments of public life. The man who had known how to stay the course now showed that he also understood how to leave it. Horses were waiting at the door immediately after Washington read his statement. The crowd gathered at the doorway to wave him off. It was the greatest exit in American history.

Our public life is largely premised on an exploitation of our common anxiety. The advertising of consumerism and the drives of the acquisitive society, like he serpent, seduce into believing there are securities apart from the reality of God.

It is seldom that persons who enjoy intervals of public life are happy in their periods of seclusion.

I was in elective politics for 24 years. I've made four national races, two for President, two for Vice President. I have found there are other ways to serve, and I'm enjoying them.

I didn't grow up in public life. I lived with my mother in Boston, not in Washington, DC, so I was somewhat sheltered from that.

Currently and for some time now, the course of urban growth and development in the United States has been hostile to an informal public life;

In great cities, spaces as well as places are designed and built: walking, witnessing, being in public, are as much part of the design and purpose as is being inside to eat, sleep, make shoes or love or music. The word citizen has to do with cities, and the ideal city is organized around citizenship -- around participation in public life.

There is no money in what is aptly called free association: we are instead encouraged by media and advertising to fear each other and regard public life as a danger and a nuisance, to live in secured spaces, communicate by electronic means, and acquire our information from media rather than each other.

We have, most of us, a deep desire for this democratic public life, for a voice, for membership, for purpose and meaning that cannot be only personal. We want larger selves and a larger world.

Part of my own endeavor as a writer has been to find ways to value what is elusive and overlooked, to describe nuances and shades of meaning, to celebrate public life and solitary life, and—in John Berger's phrase—to find "another way of telling.