Public Spirit Quotes

Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people in order to betray them.

The rapid decay of our currency, the extinction of public spirit, the increasing rapacity of the times, the want of harmony in our council, the declining zeal of the people, the discontents and distresses of the officers of the army, and, I may add, the prevailing security and insensibility to danger are symptoms, in my eye, of a most alarming nature.

… public spirit became private spirit, public enterprise became private greed.

A voluntary deed is infinitely more precious to our national ideas and spirit than a thousandfold poured from the treasury.

There is a collapse of public spirit; the victories reported by the Army of Italy have not produced the enthusiasm that the national honor naturally inspires in Frenchmen.

Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country? If you are the first, then you are a parasite; if the second, then you are an oasis in the desert.

Democracy is the most demanding of all forms of government in terms of the energy, imagination, and public spirit required of the individual.

Patriotism is the vital condition of national permanence.

Plutocracy [government by the wealthy] lacks all the essential characters of a true democracy: a clean tradition, culture, public spirit, honesty, honor, courage—above all, courage.

I was always with the people.

To foster the people's willing spirit is often as important as to possess the more concrete forms of power.

I speak not in official character, imparted by diplomacy, whose secrecy is the curse of the world, but I am the harbinger of the public spirit of the people.

There is no limit to the noble aspirations which the words "my country" may evoke.

Hope is the mainspring of patriotism.

There's no hidden agenda, no political agenda [in Patriots Day]. The only politics we were really talking about was the politics of community, the politics of social love.

There is a chapter in 'Gentle Regrets' called 'Coming Home' which is really me expressing my later admiration for my father's public spirit.

Many people remember that spirit that President Kennedy summoned forth. Many people look to me as somebody who embodies that sense of possibility.

The ages of greatest public spirit are not always eminent for private virtue.

Indeed the general natural Tendency of Reading good History, must be, to fix in the Minds of Youth deep Impressions of the Beauty and Usefulness of Virtue of all Kinds, Publick Spirit, Fortitude.

A people may prefer a free government, but if, from indolence, or carelessness, or cowardice, or want of public spirit, they are unequal to the exertions necessary for preserving it. They are more or less unfit for liberty; and although it may be for their good to have had it even for a short time, they are unlikely long to enjoy it

The public spirit is in the hands of the man who knows how to make use of it.

Self-interest, to be sure, is one of the most important, but we have many other motives - honesty, self-respect, altruism, love, sympathy, faith, sense of duty, solidarity, loyalty, public-spiritedness, patriotism, and so on - that are sometimes even more important than self-seeking as the driver of our behaviors.

Capitalism is not an orgy of human villainy: it is a Utopia that has dazzled and misled very amiable and public spirited men.

A people may prefer a free government, but if, from indolence, or carelessness, or cowardice, or want of public spirit, they are unequal to the exertions necessary for preserving it; if they will not fight for it when it is directly attacked; if they can be deluded by the artifices used to cheat them out of it; if by momentary discouragement, or temporary panic, or a fit of enthusiasm for an individual, they can be induced to lay their liberties at the feet even of a great man.