A Quote by Felix Adler

Where the roots of private virtue are diseased, the fruit of public probity cannot but be corrupt.

Felix Adler

Quote Topics

Cannot Corrupt Diseased Fruit Private Probity Public Roots Virtue

Quote Author

Felix Adler
German - Educator
August 13, 1851 - April 24, 1933

Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics. There must be a positive passion for the public good, the public interest, honour, power and glory, established in the minds of the people, or there can be no republican government, nor any real liberty: and this public passion must be superiour to all private passions.

John Adams

Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics.

John Adams

Grow deep roots to harvest rich fruit! When your roots run deep, you cannot help but bear the fruit of the Spirit.

Michael Beckwith

There is no institution more vital to our Nation's survival than the American family. Here the seeds of personal character are planted, the roots of public virtue first nourished. Through love and instruction, discipline, guidance and example, we learn from our mothers and fathers the values that will shape our private lives and our public citizenship.

Ronald Reagan

Every public institution in the United States and most private ones are corrupt.

Paul Craig Roberts

The mechanism that directs government cannot be virtuous, because it is impossible to thwart every crime, to protect oneself from every criminal without being criminal too; that which directs corrupt mankind must be corrupt itself; and it will never be by means of virtue, virtue being inert and passive, that you will maintain control over vice, which is ever active: the governor must be more energetic than the governed.

Marquis de Sade

In the end, it is because the media are driven by the power and wealth of private individuals that they turn private lives into public spectacles. If every private life is now potentially public property, it is because private property has undermined public responsibility.

Terry Eagleton

For when was public virtue to be found Where private was not?

William Cowper

Corrupt citizens breed corrupt rulers, and it is the mob who finally decides when virtue shall die.

Taylor Caldwell

The founders of this nation understood that private morality is the fount from whence sound public policy springs. Replying to Washington's first inaugural address, the Senate stated: "We feel, sir, the force and acknowledge the justness of the observation that the foundation of our national policy should be lain in private morality. If individuals be not influenced by moral principles it is in vain to look for public virtue."

Thomas G. West

One of the things about the modern world is that the public and the private - which is not the same as the public and the personal - but the public and the private... it's very, very much harder than it used to be to have things that are private and things that are public.

David Miliband

Virtue, my pet, is an abstract idea, varying in its manifestations with the surroundings. Virtue in Provence, in Constantinople, in London, and in Paris bears very different fruit, but is none the less virtue.

Honore de Balzac

In the long run, the public interest depends on private virtue.

James Q. Wilson

In a community where public services have failed to keep abreast of private consumption things are very different. Here, in an atmosphere of private opulence and public squalor, the private goods have full sway.

John Kenneth Galbraith

As public schools deteriorate, the upper-middle class and wealthy send their kids to private ones. As public pools and playgrounds decay, the better-off buy memberships in private tennis and swimming clubs. As public hospitals decline, the well-off pay premium rates for private care.