A Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson

The highest proof of civility is that the whole public action of the State is directed on securing the greatest good of the greatest number.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Quote Topics

Action Civility Directed Good Greatest Greatest Number Highest Number Proof Public State Whole

Quote Author

Ralph Waldo Emerson
American - Philosopher
May 25, 1803 - April 27, 1882

The greatest achievement is selflessness. The greatest worth is self-mastery. The greatest quality is seeking to serve others. The greatest precept is continual awareness. The greatest medicine is the emptiness of everything. The greatest action is not conforming with the worlds ways. The greatest magic is transmuting the passions. The greatest generosity is non-attachment. The greatest goodness is a peaceful mind. The greatest patience is humility. The greatest effort is not concerned with results. The greatest meditation is a mind that lets go. The greatest wisdom is seeing through appearances.

Atisa

A votary of ahimsa cannot subscribe to the utilitarian formula (of the greatest good of the greatest number). He will strive for the greatest good of all and die in the attempt to realize that ideal.

Mahatma Gandhi

The action is best that secures the greatest happiness for the greatest number.

William Dean Howells

Whenever a single definite object is made the supreme end of the State, be it the advantage of a class, the safety of the power of the country, the greatest happiness of the greatest number, or the support of any speculative idea, the State becomes for the time inevitably absolute. Liberty alone demands for its realization the limitation of the public authority, for liberty is the only object which benefits all alike, and provokes no sincere opposition.

Lord Acton

I do not believe in the doctrine of the greatest good of the greatest number. The only real, dignified, human doctrine is the greatest good of all.

Mahatma Gandhi

But if one could go back in time, I'd love to have been directed by Howard Hawks, who's one of my great heroes. One of the greatest directors there ever was. He directed probably one of the greatest westerns of all time in 'Rio Bravo'.

Stephen Fry

It is the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong.

Jeremy Bentham

The purpose of conservation: The greatest good to the greatest number of people for the longest time.

Gifford Pinchot

I am for those means which will give the greatest good to the greatest number.

Abraham Lincoln

He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.

John Ruskin

The greatest obstacle to the welfare state is not greed but private charity that makes the welfare state irrelevant; the greatest obstacle to re-education of children in the name of the collective is allegiance to a higher power. More than that, the greatest obstacle to the state as god is an actual God above the state.

Ben Shapiro

Where conflicting interests must be reconciled, the question shall always be answered from the standpoint of the greatest good of the greatest number in the long run.

Gifford Pinchot

I heard of somebody once who said he was interested in doing the greatest amount of good for the greatest number, and that the greatest number was number one. That was himself. That may sound like a little bit of selfishness, but if that is selfishness, at least it is a very intelligent selfishness. Everyone has a right to be interested in himself, and I am confident that God wants us to be interested in ourselves first; that is, the first soul that anyone should bring to God should be his own soul.

Sterling W Sill

History calls those men the greatest who have ennobled themselves by working for the common good; experience acclaims as happiest the man who has made the greatest number of people happy.

Karl Marx

The United States, after all, was founded by men of liberal sentiment who were seeking to promote the greatest good for the greatest number, by creating a constitutional order for the creation and expansion of liberty.