Hyman Rickover Quotes

My public life is before you; and I know you will believe me when I say, that when I sit down in solitude to the labours of my profession, the only questions I ask myself are, What is right? What is just? What is for the public good?

I try to persuade people to act in ways that are not only in their own interest, but in the interest of society at large.

In the long run, the public interest depends on private virtue.

The final end of government is not to exert restraint but to do good.

Concern for individual well-being is for private citizens .... Princes, who enjoy public possessions, should be concerned with public good.

In the back of my mind, always, is the firmly held belief that public policies must serve the long-term interests and well-being of the community at large.

To desire the common good and strive towards it is a requirement of justice and charity.

Upon the principles of reason, the good of many is preferable to the good of a few or of one; a lasting good is to be preferred before a temporary, the public before the private.

Everyone living under the social contract we call democracy has a duty to act responsibly, to obey the laws, and to abandon certain types of self-interested behaviors that conflict with the general good.

All civil rulers, as such, are the ordinance and ministers of God; and they are all, by the nature of their office, and in their respective spheres and stations, bound to consult the public welfare.

What drives people to public service is a sense of possibility. If you haven't sensed that possibility you don't get started in the same way, you don't feel you can have an impact.

If I can't do something for the public good, what the hell am I doing?

It's the most rewarding thing to be a civil servant.

Public service used to be the highest of callings, until people like Madame Voldemort vilified it.

I think there's no higher calling in terms of a career than public service, which is a chance to make a difference in people's lives and improve the world.

The happiness of society is the end of government.

Wherefore for the public interest and benefit of human society it is requisite that the highest obligations possible should be laid upon the consciences of men.

What it missing, I think, is this notion of the common good.

I don't think politics has anything to do with left, right, or center. It has to do with trying to do right by people.

As individual life has more and more given place to crowded community life, the rights and privileges once deemed essential to the perfect liberty of the individual are often found to stand in the way of the public welfare, and to breed wrong and injustice to the community at large.

Everyone thinks chiefly of his own, hardly ever of the public interest.

The good of the people is the chief law.

If you accept the privilege of public service, you had better understand the responsibilities of public service.

The legitimate object of government is "to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they cannot, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well, for themselves.

Those who do not serve the public interest should not hold a public license.