David L. Robbins Quotes

Democratic government is responsible government—which means accountable government--and the essential problem in contracting out is that responsibility and accountability are greatly diminished.

Whistleblowers play a vital role in ensuring that the federal government is accountable to the people it serves.

I often say that shareholders should feel very responsible for how responsive corporations are to the public trust.

Only the corporation that shirks from the light would have anything to fear from government. About the welfare of such corporations we need not be over-sensitive.

Our aim is not to do away with corporations; on the contrary, these big aggregations are an inevitable development of modern industrialism …. We are not hostile to them; we are merely determined that they shall be so handled as to subserve the public good. We draw the line against misconduct, not against wealth.

I think good companies can navigate being public and doing the right things for their customers.

Having been given that public trust, we have a responsibility to share with the public.

Businesses should be focused on business, and social responsibility should be government responsibility.

WikiLeaks is designed to make capitalism more free and ethical.

If you run a corporation, your job is to maximize the return on investment for your investors. Good for you. But by the same token, we have to remember that corporations have no compassion. That's why legislation and regulations are necessary.

The question is, do corporate executives, provided they stay within the law, have responsibilities in their business activities other than to make as much money for their stockholders as possible? And my answer to that is, no they do not.

The public sector can serve as a catalyst for changing attitudes in the private sector.

Governments are elected by people; corporations are not. Governments that must answer to the people; corporations must answer only to their boards.

The Church raises the question concerning the need to establish comprehensive control over transnational corporations and the processes taking place in the financial sector of economy. This control, aimed to subject any entrepreneurial and financial activity to the interests of man and people, should be exercised through all mechanisms available in society and state.

NGOs take a lot of heat off the government and the corporations to try things that are not clearly profitable yet and might fail which would cause too much embarrassment for government.

The future will find one of its great problems is deciding how big a business enterprise must become before the public is entitled to know the full details of its management.

I think whenever something is - whenever there's something that affects the public good, then there does need to be some form of public oversight.

Lawmakers must stand up for companies that choose public safety over profit margins.

The corporation was originally conceived as a public institution whose purpose was to serve national interests and advance the public good.

We don't have to reinvent the wheel, just go back to what it was in terms of how corporations acted in terms of their collective responsibility just 20 years ago.

My own feeling is that a corporation has no right to have a political or social influence.

A government operates and acts differently than a company. So all we want to do is get some transparency here and then determine if the deal should go forward.

Enron and 9/11 marked the end of an era of individual freedom and the beginning of personal responsibility.

Doing good business - being ethical, being transparent, being caring, implementing values in your business - makes a difference, and you make money at the same time.

I have always felt that public, commercial and community organisations should be as open as possible about their affairs. They need to be accountable to their owners, their customers, their members and communities and other interest groups.