Public Interest Quotes

The story of how the Laffer Curve got its name begins with a 1978 article by Jude Wanniski in 'The Public Interest' entitled, 'Taxes, Revenues, and the Laffer Curve.' ~ Arthur Laffer

…have you noticed, Rodion Romanovitch, that in our Petersburg circles, if two clever men meet who are not intimate, but respect each other, like you and me, it takes them half an hour before they can find a subject for conversation – they are dumb, they sit opposite each other and feel awkward? Everyone has subjects of conversation, ladies for instance…people in high society always have their subjects of conversation, c'est de rigueur; but people of the middle sort like us, thinking people that is, are always tongue-tied and awkward. What is the reason of it? Whether it is the lack of public interest, or whether it is we are so honest we don't want to deceive one another, I don't know. What do you think? ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I know the Press only too well. Almost all editors hide away in spider-dens, men without thought of Family or Public Interest or the humble delights of jaunts out-of-doors, plotting how they can put over their lies, and advance their own positions and fill their greedy pocketbooks by calumniating Statesmen who have given their all for the common good and who are vulnerable because they stand out in the fierce Light that beats around the Throne. Zero Hour, Berzelius Windrip. ~ Sinclair Lewis

All public interest' legislation (and any distribution of money taken by force from some men for the unearned benefit of others) comes down ultimately to the grant of an undefined undefinable, non-objective, arbitrary power to some government officials. The worst aspect of it is not that such a power can be used dishonestly, but that it cannot be used honestly. The wisest man in the world, with the purest integrity, cannot find a criterion for the just, equitable, rational application of an unjust, inequitable, irrational principle. ~ Ayn Rand

The circumstances seemed to be simple; but they who understood such matters declared that the duration of a trial depended a great deal more on the public interest felt in the matter than upon its own nature. ~ Anthony Trollope

This emphasis on the difference between intentions and ultimate results constituted an implicit critique of the Christian and civic republican traditions, and continues to make moralists queasy. Both traditions had stressed the importance of good and benevolent intentions. By unlinking consequences from intentions, Smith called into question the necessity and possibility of elevating the economic behavior of individuals through preaching and propaganda.
Yet just as he transmuted the Christian virtue of charity into the secular virtue of benevolence, on another level Smith preserved the classic republican concern for the common good. Those who could be motivated to devote themselves to promoting the public interest were in need of superior reason and understanding, by which we are capable of discerning the remote consequences of all our actions, and of foreseeing the advantage or detriment which is likely to result from them. ~ Jerry Z. Muller

The trouble is that privacy is at once essential to, and in tension with, both freedom and security. A cabinet minister who keeps his mistress in satin sheets at the French taxpayer's expense cannot justly object when the press exposes his misuse of public funds. Our freedom to scrutinise the conduct of public figures trumps that minister's claim to privacy. The question is: where and how do we draw the line between a genuine public interest and that which is merely what interests the public? ~ Timothy Garton Ash

Sociologists of regulation - such people exist - talk about something called 'regulatory capture'. This is the process whereby a state regulator ends up promoting the interests of the industry it is supposed to monitor, at the expense of the public interest. It can happen for a number of reasons, and many of them are very human. For example, if you work in the technical business o f drug approval and pharmacovigilance, who can you chat to about your day's work? To your partner, it's all baffling and pedantic; but to the people in the regulatory affairs division of the companies you work with every day, they understand. You have so much in common with them. So industry bodies - not even necessarily the pharmaceutical companies themselves - might offer things as intangible as friendship, and opportunities to socialize. ~ Ben Goldacre

To serve the public interest is not the same as being a servant of public opinion. ~ Sidney Hook

I want to encourage public interest in space. I have never let my condition stop me. You only live once. ~ Stephen Hawking

Democracy does not have to be a bloodsport, it can be an honorable enterprise that advances the public interest. ~ William J. Clinton

You will find in me a loyal head of state who is ready listen and understand, warn and advise as well as to defend the public interest at all times. ~ King Felipe VI

Protectionist measures may permit domestic industries to thrive, which under free trade would wither in the face of cheap imports. Imports may be opposed by the government in the public interest--for example because it thinks it imprudent to rely upon foreign suppliers of certain strategic goods such as staple foods, energy, or military equipment, or because it wishes to nurture an infant industry as yet too weak to compete internationally, or because it wishes to preserve traditional industries such as fishing in order to preserve employment and local communities. ~ Vaughan Lowe

Facebook draws from the public and public-interest sphere, a simultaneously bold and modest step towards acknowledging that our new networked technologies deeply affect our lives in ways not always captured or best shaped by the typical template of consumer and seller. ~ Jonathan Zittrain

At the heart of the First Amendment is the recognition of the fundamental importance of the free flow of ideas and opinions on matters of public interest and concern. The freedom to speak one's mind is not only an aspect of individual liberty - and thus a good unto itself - but also is essential to the common quest for truth and the vitality of society as a whole. We have therefore been particularly vigilant to ensure that individual expressions of ideas remain free from governmentally imposed sanctions. ~ William Rehnquist

Yet, whatever form it takes, the belief that individual freedom exists only when the state is frail misunderstands the source of liberty. The state can be more or less effective in the pursuit of its goals - it can be stupid or smart - and it can be used for illiberal, totalitarian ends. But ultimately a healthy state dedicated to the public interest makes individual freedom possible. This is the paradox of individualism. The individual freedom that citizens of liberal societies rightly cherish, even our very concept of the individual, is impossible without a robust state. Modern individualism depends on the existence of vigorous and effective government dedicated to the public interest, to policies that a majority of citizens would support without regard to their particular position in society at any given moment. It depends as well on the willingness of individual citizens to imagine themselves as members of a common public whose interests the state regularly vindicates. ~ Mark S. Weiner

Allowing the U.S. government to intimidate its people with threats of retaliation for revealing wrongdoing is contrary to the public interest. ~ Edward Snowden

People tend to assess the relative importance of
issues by the ease with which they are retrieved from memory - and this is
largely determined by the extent of coverage in the media. Frequently
mentioned topics populate the mind even as others slip away from
awareness. In turn, what the media choose to report corresponds to their
view of what is currently on the public's mind. It is no accident that
authoritarian regimes exert substantial pressure on independent media.
Because public interest is most easily aroused by dramatic events and by
celebrities, media feeding frenzies are common ~ Daniel Kahneman

The public interest has shifted from the nature of man to the nature of nature and to the prospects of domination its exploration opened; and the loss of interest even turned to hatred when the nature of man proved to be resistant to the changes dreamed up by intellectuals who want to add the lordship of society and history to the mastery of nature. ~ Eric Voegelin

A mere enumeration of government activity is evidence
often the sole evidence offered
of "inadequate" nongovernment institutions, whose "inability" to cope with problems "obviously" required state intervention. Government is depicted as acting not in response to its own political incentives and constraints but because it is compelled to do so by concern for the public interest: it "cannot keep its hands off" when so "much is at stake," when emergency "compels" it to supersede other decision making processes. Such a tableau simple ignores the possibility that there are political incentives for the production and distribution of "emergencies" to justify expansions of power as well as to use episodic emergencies as a reason for creating enduring government institutions. ~ Thomas Sowell

The young man is also an idealist. He has yet to find out that what's in the public interest is not what the public is interested in. ~ Terry Pratchett

When a country has political parties, sooner or later it becomes impossible to intervene effectively in public affairs without joining a party and playing the game. Whoever is concerned for public affairs will wish his concern to bear fruit. Those who care about the public interest must either forget their concern and turn to other things, or submit to the grind of the parties. In the latter case, they shall experience worries that will soon supersede their original concern for the public interest. ~ Simone Weil

He that will sell his fame will also sell the public interest. ~ Solon

What stands most explicitly as critique in Nietzsche's late work in not a development from earlier interests but a return to two problems of enduring personal involvement for him, those of Wagner and of Christianity. Der Antichrist , to take one case, is not a response to a resuscitating public interest in Christian religion; it is primarily a renewed attempt to resolve for himself the question of piety. ~ John Carroll

A man, if he be active and energetic, can hardly fail also, be he never so selfish, of benefiting the general public interest. ~ Benjamin Butler

The problem, this book will argue, is not just that law schools generate so many bad ideas - mistaken and benighted ideas, impractical and socially destructive ideas - but that those ideas follow a predictable pattern. They confer power on legal intellectuals and their allies - at least the power to prescribe, often the power to litigate. The movement that results - whether couched as public interest law, as minority empowerment law, or as international human rights law - is in fact a bid for power, whether naked or cleverly disguised. ~ Walter Olson

There's no doubt that in the last two to three decades, American democracy has been hacked. It was based on the regular harvesting of the wisdom of crowds, but now big sources of special interest money are able to prevent the passage of almost any meaningful reform that's aimed at the public interest. ~ Al Gore

They may then be willing to cast principled votes based on an educated understanding of the public interest in the face of polls suggesting that the public itself may have quite a different understanding of where its interest lies. ~ James L. Buckley

When a donor is asked to contribute to a group whose innocuous-sounding name makes it appear to be doing work in the public interest, that donor should have a clear picture of where his or her money is going. ~ Eric Schneiderman

However, when the privilege depends solely on the broad, undifferentiated claim of public interest in the confidentiality of such conversations, a confrontation with other values arises. ~ Warren E. Burger

People who intend only to serve public interest are led by invisible hand to private interest which was no part of their intention. ~ Milton Friedman

The public interest may be presumed to be what men would choose if they saw clearly, thought rationally, acted disinterestedly and benevolently. ~ Walter Lippmann

I watched with incredulity as businessmen ran to the government in every crisis, whining for handouts or protection from the very competition that has made this system so productive. I saw Texas ranchers, hit by drought, demanding government-guaranteed loans; giant milk cooperatives lobbying for higher price supports; major airlines fighting deregulation to preserve their monopoly status; giant companies like Lockheed seeking federal assistance to rescue them from sheer inefficiency; bankers, like David Rockefeller, demanding government bailouts to protect them from their ill-conceived investments; network executives, like William Paley of CBS, fighting to preserve regulatory restrictions and to block the emergence of competitive cable and pay TV. And always, such gentlemen proclaimed their devotion to free enterprise and their opposition to the arbitrary intervention into our economic life by the state. Except, of course, for their own case, which was always unique and which was justified by their immense concern for the public interest. ~ William E. Simon

In her only departure from her prepared text, Heckler added, "We must conquer AIDS before it affects the heterosexual population and the general population…. We have a very strong public interest in stopping AIDS before it spreads outside the risk groups, before it becomes an
overwhelming problem."

The statement infuriated organizers from AIDS groups who considered AIDS already an "overwhelming problem" and did not consider it a priority of AIDS research to stop the scourge only "before it affects the heterosexual population." Moreover, many gay leaders wondered who had determined that homosexuals were not part of the "general population" that so concerned the Secretary. ~ Randy Shilts

Alyque and his team began a public interest ad campaign (for which Lintas had become famous) to raise aid for drought stricken Rajasthan and raised substantial assistance. A death row convict wrote to me from his cell. In the epochal Express style that always encouraged the reporter, the editors ran the story on the front page. ~ Teesta Setalvad

There are a lot of people who do not care about public interest. In fact, they always cater to their own self-interests. ~ Eraldo Banovac

There are members of our body politic who tell us that the public interest is best served when government action is reduced to a minimum and especially when it is kept negative in character. But just now, the nation as a whole seems to be moving rather swiftly and decisively - as is the world as a whole - in the opposite direction. More and more, we Americans are initiating new forms of positive government action for the common good. Between these two tendencies the struggle becomes every day more open and more intense. And as we wage that conflict it is well to remember that the logic of the Constitution gives no backing to either of the two combatants, as against the other. We are left free, as any self-governing people must leave itself free, to determine by specific decisions what our economy shall be. It would be ludicrous to say that we are committed by the Constitution to the economic cooperations of socialism. But equally ludicrous are those appeals by which, in current debate, we are called upon to defend the practices of capitalism, of "free enterprise," so-called, as essential to the freedom of the American Way of Life. The American Way of Life is free because it is what we Americans freely choose - from time to time - that it shall be. ~ Alexander Meiklejohn

The principle is twofold, do not forget. The book, as a book, belongs to the author, but as a thought, it belongs – the word is not too extreme – to the human race. All intelligences, all minds, are eligible, all own it. If one of these two rights, the right of the writer and the right of the human mind, were to be sacrificed, it would certainly be the right of the writer, because the public interest is our only concern, and that must take precedence in anything that comes before us. ~ Victor Hugo

Roosevelt had defined the public interest in the previously private struggle between labor and capital. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

Companies like Enron have learned that small investments in endowing chairs, sponsoring research programs or hiring moonlighting professors can return big payoffs in generating books, reports, articles, testimony and other materials to push for and rationalize public policy positions that damage the public interest but benefit corporate bottomlines. ~ Ralph Nader

Positive market incentives operating in the public interest are too few and far between, and are also up against a seemingly never-ending expansion of perverse incentives and lobbying. ~ Mo Ibrahim

This is why I like Diakopoulos' approach of using technology to answer a need. He identifies four news consumers needs: 1. staying informed; 2. gaining personal identity (through, for example, reinforcing one's values); 3. integrating and interacting socially (finding the basis for conversation); and 4. being entertained. He next defines 10 key journalistic functions: 1. truth 2. independence 3. impartiality 4. public interest 5. watchdogging 6. organizing forums 7. informing 8. storytelling 9. aggregating 10. sensemaking ~ Jeff Jarvis

There is already huge public interest in stage musicals. ~ Tim Rice

Writing is not chewing your nails and picking your teeth, but a matter of public interest. ~ Alfred Doblin

If the Federal Reserve pursues a policy which Congress or the President believes not to be in the public interest, there is nothing Congress can do to reverse the policy. Nor is there anything the people can do. Such bastions of unaccountable power are undemocratic. The Federal Reserve System must be reformed, so that it is answerable to the elected representatives of the people. ~ Wright Patman

When we control business in the public interest we are also bound to encourage it in the public interest or it will be a bad thing for everybody and worst of all for those on whose behalf the control is nominally exercised. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

In the long run, the public interest depends on private virtue. ~ James Q. Wilson

The fences that protect the public interest seem to be fast disappearing, while the ones that restrict our liberties keep multiplying. ~ Naomi Klein

Democracy entails a correlation between the public interest as expressed by a majority of the population and the governmental policies that affect them. The term encompasses various manifestations, including direct, participatory and representative democracy, but Governments must be responsive to people and not to special interests such as the military-industrial complex, financial bankers and transnational corporations. Democracy is inclusive and does not privilege an anthropological aristocracy. ~ Alfred-Maurice De Zayas

Every woman who has any margin of time or money to spare should adopt some one public interest, some philanthropic undertaking,or some social agitation of reform, and give to that cause whatever time and work she may be able to afford ... ~ Frances Power Cobbe

Pundits, opponents, and disillusioned supporters would blame Obama for squandering the promise of his administration. Certainly he and his administration made their share of mistakes. But it is hard to think of another president who had to face the kind of guerrilla warfare waged against him almost as soon as he took office. A small number of people with massive resources orchestrated, manipulated, and exploited the economic unrest for their own purposes. They used tax-deductible donations to fund a movement to slash taxes on the rich and cut regulations on their own businesses. While they paid focus groups and seasoned operatives to frame these self-serving policies as matters of dire public interest, they hid their roles behind laws meant to protect the anonymity of philanthropists, leaving more folksy figures like Santelli to carry the message. ~ Jane Mayer

I developed an interest in supporting independent journalists in a way that leverages their work to the greatest extent possible, all in support of the public interest. ~ Pierre Omidyar

It is when the politician loves neither the public good nor himself, or when his love for himself is limited and is satisfied by the trappings of office, that the public interest is badly served. ~ John F. Kennedy

One can't allow blind loyalty to a friendship to lead one away from acting in the public interest. If Martin [Schulz] were to propose something that was totally absurd, our friendship would not prevent me from doing the opposite. ~ Jean-Claude Juncker

If football were managed as democratically as the Athenian government the students to play for their university would be chosen by lot. But in matters of government it is difficult to know who has the most skill, and very far from certain that a politician will use his skill in the public interest rather than in his own or in that of his class or party or creed. ~ Anonymous

As the contest proceeded, public interest increased and the entire country watched to see which company would win the big government subsidies through the mountains. ~ John Moody

It is important that politicians defend their ability to act without fear or favour, and it is in the public interest that they hold ministers and public servants to account. ~ Jeremy Corbyn

A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men who, even if their action be honest and intended for the public interest, are necessarily concentrated upon the great undertakings in which their own money is involved and who necessarily, by very reason of their own limitations, chill and check and destroy genuine economic freedom. ~ Woodrow Wilson

People do want to know, there is curiosity, it is a matter of public interest. That is not sufficient reason to disclose information. It is not sufficient that there be curiosity and interest that you want to disclose information. ~ Tharman Shanmugaratnam

In the public interest, therefore, it is better that we lose the services of the exceptions who are good Judges after they are seventy and avoid the presence on the Bench of men who are not able to keep up with the work, or to perform it satisfactorily. ~ William Howard Taft

Moskin has brought together with care and lucidity an inside history of American diplomacy written through the eyes of the many diplomats who conceived and carried it out over 225 years. You experience the challenges, successes, and foibles. Over time, the Foreign Service evolved into a professional cadre serving the public and presidents, often at the peril of their lives. Anyone interested in understanding our diplomacy, what makes it tick, and how it strives to serve the public interest should read this masterful history. ~ Thomas R. Pickering

I carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest. There are all sorts of documents that would have made a big impact that I didn't turn over, because harming people isn't my goal. Transparency is. ~ Edward Snowden

We are plagued by a corrupt polity which promotes unlawful and/or immoral behaviour. Public interest has no practical significance in everyday behaviour among the ruling factions. The real problems of our world are not being confronted by those in power. In the guise of public service, they use whatever comes to hand for personal gain. They are insane with and for power. ~ Frank Herbert

It is in the public interest to know what our governors are up to. If they are up to doing good, then they are only too happy to let us know. When they are up to no good, they want that kept secret. ~ Jimmy Reid

Broadcasters have a responsibility to serve the public interest and protect Americans from objectionable content, particularly during the hours when children are likely to be watching. ~ Bart Gordon

I've always thought the pre-Revolutionary system was more elegant, but it did concentrate too much power in the hands of one person. Keyes says that at least you knew who the man was then. The person who represents a Lobby in Congress is never the one who makes the real decisions; the real leaders are rarely identifiable and are never held responsible for their actions. If a puppet gets in trouble they sacrifice him and haul out another. I don't doubt that that's true, at least some of the time, but it's certainly not the whole story. If a Lobby consistently acts against the public interest, its voting power dwindles away. Keyes says that's a cynical illusion: all the polls reflect is how much money a Lobby has put into advertising. ~ Joe Haldeman

Corporate America corrupted the watchdogs that were supposed to be guarding the public interest by feeding them under the table. ~ Arianna Huffington

With deregulation, one sector of the economy after another is "liberated" to capital's unmonitored authority. The very notion that there is a public interest is contested. ~ Herbert Schiller

I'm not trying to top anything. I'm trying to be useful, to play a positive role, to serve the public interest. ~ Al Gore

There is nothing wrong with entertainment. As some psychiatrist once put it, we all build castles in the air. The problems come when we try to live in them. The communications media of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with telegraphy and photography at their center, called the peek-a-boo world into existence, but we did not come to live there until television. Television gave the epistemological biases of the telegraph and the photograph their most potent expression, raising the interplay of image and instancy to an exquisite and dangerous perfection. And it brought them into the home. We are by now well into a second generation of children for whom television has been their first and most accessible teacher and, for many, their most reliable companion and friend. To put it plainly, television is the command center of the new epistemology. There is no audience so young that it is barred from television. There is no poverty so abject that it must forgo television. There is no education so exalted that it is not modified by television. And most important of all, there is no subject of public interest - politics, news, education, religion, science, sports - that does not find its way to television. Which means that all public understanding of these subjects is shaped by the biases of television. ~ Neil Postman

Harshness towards individuals who flout the laws and commands of the state is for the public good; no greater crime against the public interest is possible than to show leniency to those who violate it. ~ Cardinal Richelieu

For over a century, popular struggles in the democracies have used the nation-state to temper raw capitalism. The power of voters has offset the power of capital. But as national barriers have come down in the name of freer commerce, so has the capacity of governments to manage capitalism in a broad public interest. So the real issue is not "trade" but democratic governance. ~ Robert Kuttner

I am convinced that of all the people on the two sides of the great curtain, the space pilots are the least likely to hate each other. Like the late Erich von Holst, I believe that the tremendous and otherwise not quite explicable public interest in space flight arises from the subconscious realization that it helps to preserve peace. May it continue to do so! ~ Konrad Lorenz

There are excellent public interest grounds to have a search engine whose rankings are transparent. ~ Mitch Kapor

The idea of a king is to be a protector of the rich against unjust treatment, of the people against insult and oppression. Whereas a tyrant, as has often been repeated, has no regard to any public interest, except as conducive to his private ends; his aim is pleasure, the aim of a king, honor. Wherefore also in their desires they differ; the tyrant is desirous of riches, the king, of what brings honor. And the guards of a king are citizens, but of a tyrant mercenaries. ~ Aristotle.

To say that only those businesses affected with a public interest may be regulated is but another way of stating that all those businesses which may be regulated are affected with a public interest. ~ Harlan Stone

Public interest in most of the Middle East was slight at that time; the Arab-Israeli conflict was all that people were interested in and that was not my specialty. ~ Juan Cole

The Mars Committee and its various offshoots have struggled consistently over the years on behalf of the public interest. Their work is presented with great documentary force in Dr. Stanley V McDaniel's 1993 book, The McDaniel Report, published by North Atlantic Books of Berkeley, California. This report should be required reading for anybody who cares about the future of public science. ~ Whitley Strieber

As so often happens in politics, what appears to be politically expedient for those in power rarely overlaps with the public interest. The lesser evils of the regime become entrenched, while the greater good is never realized. ~ Jason Stearns

A newspaper is a private enterprise owing nothing whatsoever to the public, which grants it no franchise. It is therefore affected with no public interest. ~ William Peter Hamilton

One of the most powerful defences the media can offer for controversial actions is, of course, public interest. ~ Rowan Williams

By encouraging men to spy and report on one another, by making it in the private interest of large numbers of citizens to evade the controls, and by making actions illegal that are in the public interest, the controls undermine individual morality. ~ Milton Friedman

If you are given a public responsibility, you have to listen, weigh up all the issues, but ultimately you have to form a view of what you genuinely think is in the public interest ... put the public interest above the vested interest. ~ Graeme Samuel

Philanthropic leaders genially speak of complementing government, not competing with it as if monopoly were good and competition destructive-thus unwittingly conspiring against the public interest. ~ Richard Cornuelle

They were not serving the public interest, but their immediate personal interest, and it was nothing to them what the ultimate effect of their course on the general prosperity might be, if but they increased their own hoard, for these goods were their own, and the more they sold and the more they got for them, the greater their gain. The more wasteful the people were, the more articles they did not want which they could be induced to buy, the better for these sellers. ~ Edward Bellamy

The way we've set up corporations, even a majority vote of stockholders cannot demand that a corporation's policies reflect the public good or preserve the environment for future use. That's because profit is the one and only motive. It's up to government and it's up to people to protect the public interest. Corporations are simply not allowed to. ~ David Suzuki

Every country needs its whistleblowers. They are crucial to a healthy society. The employee who, in the public interest, has the independence of judgement and the personal courage to challenge malpractice or illegality is a kind of public hero. ~ Fuad Alakbarov

The papers, you know, they're always gonna just make stuff up. They think it's in the public interest. ~ Jake Bugg

There is no such thing as 'the public interest' except as the sum of the interests of individual men. And the basic, common interest of all men - all rational men - is freedom. Freedom is the first requirement of 'the public interest' - not what men do when they are free, but that they are free. All their achievements rest on that foundation - and cannot exist without it. ~ Ayn Rand

The right to resign is one of the cherished privileges of a free man; the willingness to resign, when principle and the public interest are served, is always present in the public-spirited and the self-respecting. They look upon resigning, not as a cowardice and quitting and a personal disaster, but as the ultimate guarantee of their useful influence and of their personal dignity. - Walter Lippmann ~ David Pietrusza

The Open Market Committee, as presently established, is plainly not in the public interest. This committee must be operated by purely public servants, representatives of the people as a whole and not any single interest group. The Open Market Committee should be abolished, and its powers transferred to the Federal Reserve Board - the present public members of the committee, with reasonably short terms of office. ~ Wright Patman

Calgene's FlavrSavr tomato was the first genetically modified whole food. When Calgene brought it to the FDA in 1992, the tomato was subjected to $2 million-worth of testing by the FDA on top of the testing done by Calgene. In a public meeting the FDA scientists brought the results of their extensive and sophisticated chemical analyses to a panel of external advisers; the panel included representatives of public interest groups and industry, as well as scientists whose specialties ranged from nutrition to basic plant science. The concluding slide of the FDA's presentation had a simple message: Calgene's transgenic tomato … is a tomato.

Mendel in the Kitchen: A Scientist's View of Genetically Modified Food ~ Fedoroff, Nina V.; Brown, Nancy Marie

The only thing that shocks me is public interest in people who shouldn't be interesting at all, like Jade Goody. We've gone past Andy Warhol and all those clever, arty and witty things that were done and said in the sixties ... the fifteen minutes, and so on. Now your celebrities don't have to do anything, they're just voted in. And that shocks me. ~ Marco Pirroni

Arthur Church, who as I say took local journalism very seriously, wrote an eloquent defence of reporting even the nasty things. The gist of it was this, that it was in the public interest that the truth be known and known because it has been carefully reported and published. Without it, you are relying on the man in the pub, and rumour, possibly malicious rumour. If the local paper does for some reason get it wrong, then this would be known, and an apology and clarification would be made. This was not the best of all worlds, but better than the world of hearsay. ~ Terry Pratchett

Now 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 Saul

The public interest requires doing today those things that men of intelligence and good will would wish, five or ten years hence, had been done. ~ Edmund Burke

As a public interest lawyer, your fund of injustice will never be empty. ~ Ralph Nader

As they have the public society under their care and power, so they have advantage to promote the public interest every way; and if they are such rulers as have been spoken of, they are some of the greatest blessings to the public. Their influence has a tendency to promote their wealth and cause their temporal possessions and blessings to abound: and to promote virtue amongst them, and so to unite them one to another in peace and mutual benevolence, and make them happy in society, each one the instrument of his neighbor's quietness, comfort and prosperity; and by these means to advance their reputation and honor in the world; and which is much more, to promote their spiritual and eternal happiness. ~ Jonathan Edwards

It's an intolerable abuse of power to have employees who are supposed to be advancing the public interest actually working on political campaigns. ~ Sal Albanese

A majority of Americans support Social Security and Medicare, a progressive tax system and a government that regulates business in the public interest, but most share deep skepticism about the government's ability to do all this well. ~ Adam Davidson