Al Gore Quotes

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

Private interests must be made subservient to the general interests of the community

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

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 more than the sum total of the interest groups.

The end of government is the good of mankind.

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.

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

The modern democratic state is legitimated by the priority of the public over the private, where public goods trump private interests, and the commonweal takes precedence over individual fortunes.

Government is a progressive instrument for the common good.

All government is intended for the benefit of the people.

The supreme inspiration is the common weal.

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.

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.

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.

The happiness of society is the end of government.

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

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 purpose of government is to obtain the greatest quantity of human happiness.

The good of the people is the chief law.

The common good is chiefly guaranteed when personal rights and duties are maintained. The chief concern of civil authorities must therefore be to ensure that these rights are acknowledged, respected, coordinated with other rights, defended and promoted

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

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.