I believe good governments have nothing to hide. We want to ensure we maintain confidence in our public institutions.
There is no such thing as a private institution in America; there is no such thing as a public institution. Private institutions go after public money and public institutions go after private money.
History proves to us that the state, government, religion, church, all public institutions, are the only means by which wild and animal man obtains his small share of reason and justice.
Public libraries are the last vestige of public free space.
Acting upon everybody for 30 minutes in 24 hours, the press is asked to create a mystical force called Public Opinion that will take up the slack in public institutions. The press has often mistakenly pretended that it could do just that.
We should put behind us the era of diminishing trust in public institutions and weakened confidence in our country's public leaders.
I have a passion for libraries. They are potentially real community centers.
The government can't even do a good job of something as simple as running the Post Office. How can it be expected to do a good job with something really important, like educating our children?
Ideology that believes government is bad, and that public institutions and places are not valuable, is as destructive as corporate greed.
There are major efforts being made to dismantle Social Security, the public schools, the post office - anything that benefits the population has to be dismantled. Efforts against the U.S. Postal Service are particularly surreal.
You go to your public library, or you call your fire department or police department, what do you think you are calling? These are socialist institutions.
Among the first, perhaps the very first, instrument for the improvement of the condition of men is knowledge, and to the acquisition of much of the knowledge adapted to the wants, the comforts, and enjoyments of human life public institutions and seminaries of learning are essential.
The National Park Service today exemplifies one of the highest traditions of public service.
A republican is someone who defends public institutions and democratic values, someone who is a defender of public life, someone who respects the principles of liberty, so in that sense we are very calm and at ease.
Yes, women should be free to cover their faces when walking down the street. But in our schools, hospitals, airports, banks and civil institutions, it is not unreasonable - nor contrary to the teachings of Islam - to expect women to show the one thing that allows the rest of us to identify them... namely, their face.
I have white friends who have the Confederate flag on their license plates, and I have no issue with that if they see that as a matter of heritage. But I do not think it should ever fly over a state, city, county building, or school, for the simple reason that it represents secession from the Union.
Our culture's tolerance wears thin when religion intrudes on the public discourse... Our schools, courtrooms, and libraries set the tone for the entire society. The message they currently communicate is harsh and unambiguous: religion is offensive and should be kept out of public view.
It is with humiliation that I am forced to insist upon the same equality in other public institutions of learning and science, also in churches and in the last resting-places of the dead. So far as any of these are public in character and organized by law, they must follow the general requirement. How strange that any institution of learning or science, any church or any cemetery should set up a discrimination so utterly inconsistent with correct principle
This was one of the early attacks on discrimination in public accommodations.
Libraries are the pride of the city.
We want to strengthen democracy.
Libraries are not just for reading in, but for sociable thinking, exploring, exchanging ideas and falling in love. They were never silent. Technology will not change that, for even in the starchiest heyday of Victorian self-improvement, libraries were intended to be meeting places of the mind, recreational as well as educational.
Every public institution in the United States and most private ones are corrupt.
Democracy is about institutions: it's about having things like schools and judiciary and the Ford Foundation, or 'The Nation' magazine - you need progressive institutions, you know what I mean? Those are important institutions to make sure that the government functions.
The prisons are open all day long. I think the schools should be too.
There are a large number of institutions in this country which we should not politicise.