John Adams Quotes

The leader is supposed to represent the community, the public good. He's supposed to be the focal point and the guide and the inspiration, and to represent a concern for the public good. The trouble is, the tragic problem is, very often, when you are a leader and pursue the public good, it may be at the expense of your private interests in a very drastic way

To be interested in the public good we must be disinterested, that is, not interested in goods in which our personal selves are wrapped up.

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.

Private passions tire and exhaust themselves, public ones never.

We should all spend some time of our life doing service to our country. To me, I would give up a couple of years.

They need to be re-supplied with energy, and that energy comes from asking not what your country can do for you, but from what you can do for your country.

America needs young people to be inspired to choose sacrifice over greed.

You don't ever earn a right to stop doing anything if you feel there is an obligation to move in terms of public service.

No personal consideration should stand in the way of performing a public duty.

A voluntary deed is infinitely more precious to our national ideas and spirit than a thousandfold poured from the treasury.

We are here to serve our citizens and not our ambitions.

A good subject makes it his rule to prefer the public welfare to everything else, bravely to sacrifice his fortune, and his private interests, and even his life, for the preservation of the state; and to employ all his abilities and his industry to advance the honor, and to procure the advantage of his native country.

Liberty was realized when the citizens were ... willing to sacrifice their private interests for the sake of the community

We must take man as we find him, and if we expect him to serve the public we must interest his passions in doing so.

It is the essence of responsibility to put the public good ahead of personal gain.

The only reward in a public life is public progress. You stand back and say, 'What did I get out of it?' You look around, and the place is better, and that's it.

I'm bothered when people don't understand that they have an obligation to use their best measure of devotion, of resources, to sacrifice for the common good.

Not everybody goes to government to serve themselves and not their country.

It so happens that after a certain stage, we have to give in to the wishes of the people rather than your own satisfaction. I look at it as my responsibility to satisfy the wishes of the people more than mine.

There is no social entity with a good that undergoes some sacrifice for its own good. There are only individual people, different individual people, with their own individual lives.

Duty is that mode of action which constitutes the best application of the capacity of the individual to the general advantage.

We are at our best when we give the ultimate sacrifice of putting other people, putting the country, putting our communities ahead of ourselves.

This state of mind, which subordinates the interests of the ego to the conservation of the community, is really the first premise for every truly human culture... The basic attitude from which such activity arises, we call-to distinguish it from egoism and selfishness-idealism. By this we understand only the individual's capacity to make sacrifices for the community, for his fellow men.

The act of willingly subtracting from one's own limited store of the good and the agreeable for the sake of adding to that of others reflects the understanding that individual happiness needs a base broader than the mere satisfaction of selfish passions. From there, it is not such a large step to the realization that respecting the susceptibilities and rights of others is as important as defending one's own susceptibilities and rights if civilized society is to be safeguarded.