Pope John XXIII Quotes

The end of government is the good of mankind.

There are certain public needs that outweigh private interests.

The happiness of society is the end of government.

A liberty subject to law and subordinate to the common welfare.

As individual life has more and more given place to crowded community life, the rights and privileges once deemed essential to the perfect liberty of the individual are often found to stand in the way of the public welfare, and to breed wrong and injustice to the community at large.

The right to private property is inconceivable without responsibilities to the common good.

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

The rights of the lowliest criminal are not his alone. They belong to us all.

Earlier pluralist societies destroyed themselves because no one took care of the common good. They abounded in communities but could not sustain community, let alone create it.

The defense of individual rights has reached such extremes as to make society as a whole defenseless against certain individuals. It is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.

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.

I believe in trying to get a balance between individual freedom on the one hand and social responsibility on the other.

A nation is formed by the willingness of each of us to share in the responsibility for upholding the common good.

Power has only one duty - to secure the social welfare of the People.

The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.

Every society, all government, and every kind of civil compact therefore, is or ought to be, calculated for the general good and safety of the community.

If, in the name of liberty, we allow individuals to act in a way that damages the wellbeing of the whole, it will inevitably mean the breakdown of mutuality, thereby changing the very nature of our society.

It is the Band which unites the Interests of Individuals; it secures to them their respective Rights, and preserves them from Injuries; it is the Source of numberless Blessings, which are interrupted, or wholly vanish, the Moment it is disturbed.

The guard rails on a highway may restrict some folks from driving the way they want, but those rules mostly end up saving the lives of those other drivers who understand that living in a society means behaving in a commonly beneficial way.

Citizenship in a diverse society means living with our deepest differences and committing ourselves to work for public policies that are in the best interest of all individuals, families, communities and our nation.

In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society…. These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

To affirm my own rights I must define and affirm the rights of others.

The public good is in nothing more essentially interested, than in the protection of every individual’s private rights.

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom.

Men are to be guided only by their self-interests. Good government is a good balancing of these …