James Kent Quotes

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

There are certain public needs that outweigh private interests.

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

We need government to do for the people what they cannot do for themselves.

We have to be guided by the interest of society and the development of the state.

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.

Defining of the public interest is always very, very difficult.

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.

The happiness of society is the end of government.

Government is instituted for the common good, for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people and not for the profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men.

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

The right to private property is inconceivable without responsibilities to the common good.

The good of the people is the chief law.

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.

The end of government is the good of mankind.

Private property is a creature of society, and is subject to the calls of that society, wherever its necessities shall require it…

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

The supreme inspiration is the common weal.

That’s the function of government—to do for people what they cannot do for themselves.

Real politics should work for the long-term and overall interests of the community.

Some things are too important to be left to the private sector.

Look around, and you see everywhere the exertions and acts of individuals restricted, regulated, or promoted, on the principle of the common welfare.

A liberty subject to law and subordinate to the common welfare.

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.

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