Common Weal Quotes

The new States will know less of the public interest than these; will have an interest in many respects different; in particular will be little scrupulous of involving the community in wars, the burdens and operations of which would fall chiefly on the maritime States. Provision ought, therefore, to be made to prevent the maritime States from being hereafter outvoted by them…. They would not be able to furnish men equally enlightened to share in the administration of our common interests. The busy haunts of men, not the remote wilderness, was the proper school of political talents. If the Western people get power into their hands, they will ruin the Atlantic interest. The back members are always most averse to the best measures…. You have no authority to throw the rights and property of this people into the 'hotch-pot' with the wild men on the Missouri, nor with the mixed, though more respectable, race of Anglo-Hispano-Gallo-Americans who bask on the sands in the mouth of the Mississippi....

I am opposed to the wholesale giving away of the public lands to railroad corporations and other like institutions; at the same time, I believe that the government can encourage, by gifts, great national enterprises which are for the common weal and are so placed that they cannot properly expect local support.

Resolved, that our duty to the country, and our Southern brethren in particular, render it improper and inexpedient to agitate a question pregnant with peril and difficulty to the common weal. Resolved, That we take this opportunity to express to our Southern brethren our fixed and unalterable determination to resist every attempt that may be made to interfere with the relations in which master and slave now stand, or guarantied to them by the Constitution of the United States

No task, rightly done, is truly private. It is part of the world s work.

The laying of taxes is the power, and the general welfare the purpose for which the power is to be exercised. They are not to lay taxes ad libitum for any purpose they please; but only to pay the debts or provide for the welfare of the Union.

I will govern according to the common weal, but not according to the common will.

The British Empire has advanced to a new conception of autonomyand freedom, to the idea of a system of British nations, each freely ordering its own individual life, but bound together in unity byallegiance to one Crown, and co-operating in all that concerns the common weal.

Do you wish to be free? Then above all things, love God, love your neighbor, love one another, love the common weal; then you will have true liberty.

The supreme inspiration is the common weal.

Do not, as is usually the case, thrust the care of the common weal upon your neighbor; then, as each one in his own thoughts makes light of the matter, all find to their surprise that they have drawn upon themselves by their neglect a personal misfortune.

The animosities of elections should have no place in our Government, for government must concern itself alone with the common weal.

A government is for the benefit of all the people.

Communicate no other intelligence to Congress at large than what may be necessary to promote the common weal, not to gratify the curiosity of individuals.

Those who by God are helmsmen are ordained to serve the common weal.

During the last 100 years, the House of Lords has never contributed one iota to popular liberties or popular freedom, or done anything to advance the common weal; but during that time it has protected every abuse and sheltered every privilege.

… since the right of possessing goods privately has been conferred not by man's law, but by nature, public authority cannot abolish it, but can only control its exercise and bring it into conformity with the common weal

It will, of course, be understood that directly or indirectly, soon or late, every advance in the sciences of human nature will contribute to our success in controlling human nature and changing it to the advantage of the common weal.

As long as a society's best minds were occupied by theological questions, it was possible to speak of a given religion as the way of thinking of the whole social organism. All the matters which most actively concerned the people were referred to it and discussed in its terms. But that belongs to a dying era. We have come by easy stages to a lack of a common system of thought that could unite the peasant cutting his hay, the student poring over formal logic, and the mechanic working in an automobile factory. Out of this lack arises the painful sense of detachment or abstraction that oppresses the "creators of culture."

Waste not the remnant of thy life in those imaginations touching other folk, whereby thou contributest not to the common weal.