A Quote by Robert Bolt

When statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties, they lead their country by a short route to chaos.

Robert Bolt

Quote Topics

Chaos Conscience Country Duties Forsake Lead Own Private Public Route Sake Short Statesmen

Quote Author

Robert Bolt
British - Playwright
August 15, 1924 - February 21, 1995

A man who really fights for justice must lead a private, not a public, life if he is to survive for even a short time.

Plato

There is seemingly no biological benefit to acting with conscience; if there were, only moral individuals would survive and procreate. Sadly, we know that's not true. The benefit of conscience is that you won't suffer guilt (private) or shame (public), and that by your own self-imposed definition, you are a moral human, a special kind of animal who takes unique pride in elevating him/herself above the termites.

Laura Schlessinger

A society - any society - is defined as a set of mutual benefits and duties embodied most visibly in public institutions: public schools, public libraries, public transportation, public hospitals, public parks, public museums, public recreation, public universities, and so on.

Robert Reich

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

Good economic theory must give the people the chance to use their talents to build their own lives. We must get away from the traditional route where the rich will do the business and the poor will depend on private or public charity.

Muhammad Yunus

In becoming a citizen, one undertakes certain duties and responsibilities. One of the more intangible of those duties and responsibilities is no matter what one's birth and background, to accept the historical past of the new country as one's own.

J. M. Coetzee

My early years abroad were spent mainly upon the European Continent, and public duties since have led me to make prolonged stays in various Continental states France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Russia where the study of Continental statesmen has been almost forced upon me.

Andrew Dickson White

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

There's an argument that private debt, in some way, is creating indentured servants in our country. But public debt does not do that. In fact, public debt does the exact opposite - it relieves private debt.

Sam Seder

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.

Robert Reich

Wounds sustained for the sake of conscience carry their own balsam with the blow.

Walter Scott

We often ask our citizens to split their public and private selves, telling them in effect that it is fine to be religious in private, but there is something askew when those private beliefs become the basis for public action.

Stephen L. Carter

Now we live in a time where the public and the private are completely fused and there isn't such a great distinction. We know our private lives are constantly made public. With Facebook and Twitter there isn't such a desire, it feels, to keep things private.

Felicity Jones

As a reformer the liberal is dissatisfied with things as they are because they violate his exceptionally tender conscience.... Liberalism does not advocate change for its own sake, but for the sake of something better in the direction of what he regards as good, namely, the maximum of liberty consistent with a regard for all men and all interests -- the general happiness based on peace and justice.