Charles D'Avenant Quotes

Private advantages are often impediments of publick Profit…publick profits should be in a single power to direct, whose Interest is only the benefit of the whole

Everyone thinks chiefly of his own, hardly ever of the public interest.

To be interested in the public good we must be disinterested, that is, not interested in goods in which our personal selves are wrapped up.

Liberals worry that what's best for the individual might not be better for the public at large. But that philosophy assumes something vicious about each and every one of us. It assumes we only care about ourselves.

I will ever prefer the weal of the public and of the whole commonwealth, in making of good laws and constitutions, to any particular and private ends of mine

…mortals cannot cherish what is private without injury to the community…to the extent that we call anything our own it absorbs our affections and diverts them from the service of the common good.

Common carriers exercise a sort of public office, and have duties to perform in which the public is interested.... Their business is, therefore, affected with a public interest

I try to persuade people to act in ways that are not only in their own interest, but in the interest of society at large.

Everyone living under the social contract we call democracy has a duty to act responsibly, to obey the laws, and to abandon certain types of self-interested behaviors that conflict with the general good.

Every man is to be considered in two capacities, the private and public; as designed to pursue his own interest, and likewise to contribute to the good of others.

Government is a progressive instrument for the common good.

Join cooperatively with one another, put aside self-interest, and take on service to the public …

In all your acts, self interest shall be cast away. Look and listen for the welfare of the whole people, and have always in view not only the present, but of the coming generations.

The public interest is more than the sum total of the interest groups.

The end of government is the good of mankind.

When fear, especially a fear for one’s own well-being, clouds decisions on public policy, the public ends up falling into a solipsistic trap – each individual is so concerned with his or her own particular future, that one fails to consider the best interests of the community as a whole.

Law principally and properly seeks the common good. Planning for the common good is the task of the whole people or of someone ruling in the person of the whole people. Thus lawmaking is the task of the whole charge of the whole people; for in all other matters direction toward an end is the function of him to whom the end belongs.

Liberty was realized when the citizens were ... willing to sacrifice their private interests for the sake of the community

It is time that we labored for the happiness of the people. Legislators who are to bring light and order into the world must pursue their course with inexorable tread, fearless and unswerving as the sun.

It is the essence of responsibility to put the public good ahead of personal gain.

We need leaders who appeal to us to think about something other than narrow self-interest but instead focus upon the greater good.

Upon the principles of reason, the good of many is preferable to the good of a few or of one; a lasting good is to be preferred before a temporary, the public before the private.

An individual, in promoting his own interest, may injure the public interest; a nation, in promoting the general welfare, may check the interest of a part of its members.

Private passions tire and exhaust themselves, public ones never.

No man ever freely surrendered a portion of his own liberty for the sake of the public good; such a chimera appears only in fiction. If it were possible, we would each prefer that the pacts binding others did not bind us; every man sees himself as the centre of all the world's affairs.