Quotes About Public

Aristotle wrote The Poetics, the "secrets" of story have been as public as the library down the street. Nothing in the craft of storytelling is abstruse. In fact, at first glance telling story for the screen looks deceptively easy. But moving closer and closer to the center, trying scene by scene to make the story work, the task becomes increasingly difficult, as we realize that on the screen there's no place to hide.

In any case, many of the rites that became public had in fact originated in the family. A Roman's house was like a temple, and the paterfamilias its hign priest.

the children's eyes In momentary wonder stare upon A sixty-year-old smiling public man. — William Butler Yeats

It is woefully hard to find good, or even merely literate, writers, and they laugh at me when I say that sloppy, go-as-you-please writing carries less authority than decent prose. You must remember our public, they say. And indeed that is what I do, and I think the public is fully able to deal with the best they can produce. Patronizing the public, and assuming that it hangs, breathless, upon what it reads in the papers, is almost the worst of journalistic sins.

The writer's role is to menace the public's conscience. He must have a position, a point of view. He must see the arts as a vehicle of social criticism and he must focus on the issues of his time.

Accountability in public office is but one manifestation of this cultural inheritance, and we should not be surprised that it is the first thing to disappear when the utopians and the planners take over.

Democracies have a natural tendency to turn against their saviours. It happened to Winston Churchill. It happened to Charles de Gaulle and it happened to Margaret Thatcher. It was not the faults of those great leaders that caused their downfall, but their virtues

Observing the volatile nature of the new democracies, I came vividly to see how unimportant a part of democracy are elections, in comparison with the enduring institutions and public spirit that make elected politicians accountable.

Habits of secrecy, made necessary by the actual relations between states, violate the 'transcendental formula of public right', which is that an action is wrong if it is not compatible with being made public (PP, R. 126).

accountable government does not come through elections. It comes through respect for law, through public spirit and through a culture of confession. To

Look at that crowd', he said disgustedly. 'They think it's a circus.' 'And not a single coin are they donating', said Dina. 'That's not surprising. Pity can only be shown in small doses. When so many beggars are in one place, the public goes like this' - he put his fists to his eyes, like binoculars.

Each photograph is read as the private appearance of its referent: the age of Photography corresponds precisely to the explosion of the private into the public, or rather into the creation of a new social value, which is the publicity of the private: the private is consumes as such, publicly.

True wrestling, wrong called amateur wrestling, is performed in second-rate halls, where the public spontaneously attunes itself to the spectacular nature of the contest, like the audience at a suburban cinema.

The president of a democracy, he averred, had to show himself to the people, and some danger was an inescapable hazard of office. "To be absolutely safe," he told John Nicolay resignedly, "I should lock myself up in a box.

In "the general course of things, the popular views and even prejudices will direct the action of the rulers.

Public infamy must restrain what the laws cannot.

The first "Publius" letter pointed out that greed can corrupt a state and that a public official who betrays his trust "ought to feel the utmost rigor of public resentment and be detested as a traitor of the worst and most dangerous kind.

task of government was not to stop selfish striving—a hopeless task—but to harness it for the public good.

such conduct in a man high in office argues greater attachment to his own power than to the public good and furnishes strong reason to suspect a dangerous predetermination to oppose whatever may tend to diminish the former, however it may promote the latter.

Hamilton, wanting the bank to remain predominantly in private hands, advanced a theory that became a truism of central banking—that monetary policy was so liable to abuse that it needed some insulation from interfering politicians: "To attach full confidence to an institution of this nature, it appears to be an essential ingredient in its structure that it shall be under a private not a public direction, under the guidance of individual interest, not of public policy." 18 At

greed can corrupt a state and that a public official who betrays his trust "ought to feel the utmost rigor of public resentment and be detested as a traitor of the worst and most dangerous kind.

They profess to aim only at a reform of the constitution and of certain abuses in the public administration, but an abolition of debts public and private and a new division of property are strongly suspected in contemplation.

I will venture to pronounce it one of the most ludicrous performances which has been exhibited to public view during all the present controversy-Alexander Hamilton

to be an essential ingredient in its structure that it shall be under a private not a public direction, under the guidance of individual interest, not of public policy.