Collective Good Quotes

A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither.

A man may devote himself to death and destruction to save a nation; but no nation will devote itself to death and destruction to save mankind.

Individuals must die that the nation may live.

Greatness lies, not in being strong, but in the right using of strength; and strength is not used rightly when it serves only to carry a man above his fellows for his own solitary glory. He is the greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.

Genius has no country. It blossoms everywhere. Genius is like the light, the air. It is the heritage of all.

Since there is no such entity as 'the public,' since the public is merely a number of individuals, the idea that 'the public interest' supersedes private interests and rights can have but one meaning: that the interests and rights of some individuals take precedence over the interests and rights of others.

Both free speech rights and property rights belong legally to individuals, but their real function is social, to benefit vast numbers of people who do not themselves exercise these rights.

Socialism is the doctrine that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that his life and his work do not belong to him, but belong to society, that the only justification of his existence is his service to society, and that society may dispose of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to be its own tribal, collective good.

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.

Capitalism and altruism are incompatible; they are philosophical opposites; they cannot co-exist in the same man or in the same society.

Man is not made for society, but society is made for man.

We just cannot worry about ourselves.

… not to destroy individualism but to protect it

I believe that government is for the use of the people, and not the people for the use of the government.

None of us has any personal interest above the interests of the country. Our country is more important than our careers.

We have to move from the unbridled pursuit of self-gain at the expense of others to recovering appreciation for what we gain by caring and sharing with one another.

Society cares for the individual only so far as he is profitable.

We must stop thinking of the individual and start thinking about what is best for society.

Liberals worry that what's best for the individual might not be better for the public at large. But that philosophy assumes something vicious about each and every one of us. It assumes we only care about ourselves.

We built this [socialistic] society not for the curbing of personal liberty, but in order that human personalities should really feel free.

Let us revise our views and work from the premise that all laws should be for the welfare of society as a whole and not directed at the punishment of sins.

I have devoted myself to the cause of the people. It is a good cause. It shall ultimately prevail. It shall ultimately triumph.

What is not good for the swarm is not good for the bees.

The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities....In all that the people can individually do for themselves, government ought not interfere.

All for each, and each for all, is a good motto; but only on condition that each works with might and main to so maintain himself as not to be a burden to others.