Michael Moore Quotes

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.

You have tremendous flexibility in defining both the greater good and the greater community. If you don't succeed in this, then you will continue to pull that heavy wagon up the mountain, and despite the fact that you are pulling it, it will somehow run over your own foot.

Every society, all government, and every kind of civil compact therefore, is or ought to be, calculated for the general good and safety of the community.

I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.

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

The good of the people is the chief law.

The public interest is more than the sum total of the interest groups.

We must learn for the sake of one another to make better choices guided by more holistic measures of the common good we share.

There are only individual people, different individual people, with their own individual lives. Using one of these people for the benefit of others uses him and benefits the others. Nothing more. What happens is that something is done to him for the sake of others. Talk of an overall social good covers this up.

Societal good comes first for me.

It's time to put back on the agenda the importance of public ownership and public good, the value of working together collaboratively, not in competition.

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.

Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community.

The balance of private good and general welfare is at the bottom of civilized morals; but the morals of the Heroic Age are founded on individuality, and on nothing else.

Every man is to be considered in two capacities, the private and public; as designed to pursue his own interest, and likewise to contribute to the good of others.

By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.

So there's always been this clash between what is the public good - that which belongs to all of us in common - and what can be exploited for a private interest.

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

The only public good is that which assures the private good of the citizens.

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

I will ever prefer the weal of the public and of the whole commonwealth, in making of good laws and constitutions, to any particular and private ends of mine

The public interest is not defined as what is interesting to the public.

The end of government is the good of mankind.

The supreme inspiration is the common weal.

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