169 Public Quotes

From the moment I leave my house or my hotel room, the public owns me. The public made Alice Cooper and I can't imagine ever turning my back on my fans.

Six imams removed from a US Airways flight from Minneapolis to Phoenix are calling on Muslims to boycott the airline. If only we could get Muslims to boycott all airlines, we could dispense with airport security altogether.

I think with anybody who's doing well in the public eye or whatever, there's always gonna be a shift because people don't wanna see somebody happy all the time. And they're gonna try to take shots at people.

At no time did I intend to, or do I believe that I did put forward false information to the American people.

I think Superman should go on the Larry King show and announce that he would come back to life if people in all 50 states wanted him to.

Failure in the management of practical affairs seems to be a qualification for success in the management of public affairs.

The terrible state of public education has paid huge dividends in ignorance. Huge. We now have a country that can be told blatant lies - easily checkable, blatant lies - and I'm not talking about the covert workings of the CIA. When we have a terrorist attack, on September 11, 2001 with 19 men - 15 of them are Saudis - and five minutes later the whole country thinks they're from Iraq - how can you have faith in the public? This is an easily checkable fact. The whole country is like the O.J. Simpson jurors.

The most foreign fighters in Iraq are wearing British and American uniforms. The level of self-delusion is bordering frankly on the racist. The vast majority of the people of Iraq are against the occupation of Iraq by the American and British forces.

The news of the discovery spread fast all over the country, and inquisitive enquiries mingled with congratulations from this moment became the daily programme.

Writers are idolized not because they love their fellow men, which is never a recommendation and in extreme instances leads to crucifixion, but because their self-love is in tune with current fears and desires, and in giving it expression they are speaking for an inarticulate multitude.

Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why.

When I passed the Chancellor he arose, waved his hand at me, and I waved back at him. I think the writers showed bad taste in criticizing the man of the hour in Germany.

Whether you agree with me, disagree with me, like me or loathe me, don't bind my hands when I am negotiating on behalf of the British people.

I and my public understand each other very well: it does not hear what I say, and I don't say what it wants to hear.

I do think I go out of my way to be a very normal person and I just find it frustrating that people think that I'm some kind of weirdo reclusive that never comes out into the world. Y'know, I'm a very strong person and I think that's why actually I find it really infuriating when I read, 'She had a nervous breakdown' or 'She's not very mentally stable, just a weak, frail little creature'.

My great comfort is, that the temporary celebrity I have wrung from the world has been in the very teeth of all opinions and prejudices. I have flattered no ruling powers; I have never concealed a single thought that tempted me.

Only the public can make a star. It's the studios who try to make a system out of it.

I don't intend for this to take on a political tone. I'm just here for the drugs.

I don't talk about political matters. That's not my department.

The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.

I'm always amazed at anyone's interest in what I have to say.

There was a power outage at a department store yesterday. Twenty people were trapped on the escalators.

The grand tune is the only thing in music that the great public really understands.

The media. It sounds like a convention of spiritualists.

We like to have a point of view in our stories, not an obvious moral, but a worthwhile theme. ... All we are trying to do is give the public good entertainment. That is all they want.

A princely marriage is the brilliant edition of a universal fact, and, as such, it rivets mankind.

The public must and will be served.

You must build your House of Parliament on the river: so... that the populace cannot exact their demands by sitting down round you.

'I think celebrities have an obligation to the public to not just sing or act.'

'Well, I try not to think about the general public since I have no idea what the general public is and I don't think anybody does.'

The Internet:has become the voice of the people in the first genuine experiment in democracy yet conducted in America. It stands ready to serve every facet, every faction.

Government is a trust, and the officers of the government are trustees; and both the trust and the trustees are created for the benefit of the people.

I'm anxious to get back to D.C. to correct all the inaccuracies and lies that are being said.

What could be going so wrong that they need to check on you that often....'My bra's in my ass!!'....'Rachel' (mouths pointing to her ass 'My bra's in my ass' and again 'My bra's in my ass' shakes head no and air spells out A-S-S and then motions her to come here). I'd like to see how far they'd go to help you when you tell them your bra's in your ass.' 'Oh my, it's in the ass...do you need a different size or color? I don't know what to do about the bra in the ass. I'll get the manager I don't know.

* January 1996, reported as referring to Clinton's accuser Paula Jones and her charge that President Clinton had sexually assaulted her, but Carville insisted he meant Gennifer Flowers

On the bus going home I heard a most fascinating conversation between an old man and woman. 'What a thing, though,' the old woman said. 'You'd hardly credit it.' 'She's always made a fuss of the whole family, but never me,' the old man said. 'Does she have a fire when the young people go to see her?' 'Fire?' 'She won't get people seeing her without warmth.' 'I know why she's doing it. Don't think I don't,' the old man said. 'My sister she said to me, 'I wish I had your easy life.' Now that upset me. I was upset by the way she phrased herself. 'Don't talk to me like that,' I said. 'I've only got to get on the phone and ring a certain number,' I said, 'to have you stopped.'' 'Yes,' the old woman said, 'And you can, can't you?' 'Were they always the same?' she said. 'When you was a child? Can you throw yourself back? How was they years ago?' 'The same,' the old man said. 'Wicked, isn't it?' the old woman said. 'Take care, now' she said, as the old man left her. He didn't say a word but got off the bus looking disgruntled.

On his wife, Anne Bancroft:

It is tempting to follow a policy of malign neglect toward Chomsky's latest screed. But ignoring the book may foster the false impression that Chomsky's revelations are somehow too explosive to be challenged in a major newspaper. A far wiser course is to point out the inconsistent arguments and shrill assertions that are Chomsky's contribution to the public debate. [...] It would be unfortunate if Chomsky's momentary popularity overshadows infinitely more reasoned critiques of Bush administration policies. There are serious questions that should be weighed as America girds for final war against Saddam Hussein and dispatches military advisers to nations like the Philippines. Chomsky and his camp followers do not have a monopoly on dissent. The best response to the frenzied e-mailed dispatches from this left-wing crank remains public disclosure and ridicule. --Walter Shapiro, May 7, 2002 [218]

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people

This is Winston Churchill speaking. If you have a microphone in my room it is a waste of time. I do not talk in my sleep

You crazy, Joe Rogan!

Walter Lippmann ... described what he called 'the manufacture of consent' as 'a revolution' in 'the practice of democracy'... And he said this was useful and necessary because 'the common interests' - the general concerns of all people - 'elude' the public. The public just isn't up to dealing with them. And they have to be the domain of what he called a 'specialized class' ... [Reinhold Niebuhr]'s view was that rationality belongs to the cool observer. But because of the stupidity of the average man, he follows not reason, but faith. And this naive faith requires necessary illusion, and emotionally potent oversimplifications, which are provided by the myth-maker to keep the ordinary person on course. It's not the case, as the naive might think, that indoctrination is inconsistent with democracy. Rather, as this whole line of thinkers observes, it is the essence of democracy. The point is that in a military state or a feudal state or what we would now call a totalitarian state, it doesn't much matter because you've got a bludgeon over their heads and you can control what they do. But when the state loses the bludgeon, when you can't control people by force, and when the voice of the people can be heard you have this problem -- it may make people so curious and so arrogant that they don't have the humility to submit to a civil rule [Clement Walker, 1661], and therefore you have to control what people think. And the standard way to do this is to resort to what in more honest days used to be called propaganda, manufacture of consent, creation of necessary illusion. Various ways of either marginalizing the public or reducing them to apathy in some fashion.

My loving people,

We mean by 'politics' the people's business - the most important business there is.

When occasions present themselves, in which the interests of the people are at variance with their inclinations, it is the duty of the persons whom they have appointed to be the guardians of those interests, to withstand the temporary delusion, in order to give them time and opportunity for more cool and sedate reflection.

I have learned to hold popular opinion of no value.

The debates of that great assembly are frequently vague and perplexed, seeming to be dragged rather than to march, to the intended goal. Something of this sort must, I think, always happen in public democratic assemblies.

There is hardly a congressman prepared to go home until he has at least one speech printed and sent to his constituents, and he won't let anybody interrupt his harangue until he has made all his useful suggestions about the 24 states of the Union, and especially the district he represents.

With much care and skill power has been broken into fragments in the American township, so that the maximum possible number of people have some concern with public affairs.

Mark how my fame rings out from zone to zone: A thousand critics shouting: 'He's unknown!'

Circumstances made me the theatrical personality I am, which many people believe is also a part of my personal life.

TV and the Internet are good because they keep stupid people from spending too much time out in public.

Diana died! Diana died and...everyone's gone quiet. What's going on?

The powers know that the people at large are like children whose despair, sorrow, and tears can be turned into joy with a little toy. ... An army and navy represents the people's toys.

I love going to the park, watching the kids running around, yelling...they don't know I'm using blanks!

I don't have to stand here and defend the campaign of 1988. I'd be perfectly prepared to do it, but I was elected. I put confidence in the American people, their ability to sort through what is fair and what is unfair, what is ugly and what is un-ugly, and be as positive as possible.

She has been in the business of shaking up a complacent establishment for nearly 40 years now and was employing the most elemental shock tactic of getting naked in public both long before and long after it ever crossed Madonna's mind. She has repeatedly written about her own experiences of lesbian sex, rape, abortion, infertility, failed marriage (she was married for three weeks to a construction worker in the 1960s) and menopause, thereby leaving herself open to claims that she shamelessly extrapolates from her own condition to the rest of womankind and calls it a theory ... In part, her ability to remain so prominently in the public consciousness comes from an astute understanding and well-established symbiotic relationship with a media as eager to be shocked as she is to shock.

Ever since they found out that Lassie was a boy, the public has believed the worst about Hollywood.

Minds do not act together in public; they simply stick together; and when their private activities are resumed, they fly apart again.

The nice thing about being a celebrity is that when you bore people, they think it's their fault.

Let the public mind become corrupt, and all efforts to secure property, liberty, or life by the force of laws written on paper will be as vain as putting up a sign in an apple orchard to exclude canker worms.

The public use of a man's reason must be free at all times, and this alone can bring enlightenment among men...

From everything that man erects and builds in his urge for living nothing is in my eyes better and more valuable than bridges. They are more important than houses, more sacred than shrines. Belonging to everyone and being equal to everyone, useful, always built with a sense, on the spot where most human needs are crossing, they are more durable than other buildings and they do not serve for anything secret or bad.

I have no regret for any public act of my life, and history will vindicate my memory.

I felt eyes upon me, and they pulled me away. I looked at the gathering of eager cops; some were merely curious, while others, I knew, sought their own secret satisfaction. They all wanted to see it, my face, a defense attorney's face, here in this musty place where murder was more than a case file, where the victim was flesh and blood, the smell that of family gone to dust. I felt their eyes. I knew what they wanted, and so I turned to look again upon the almost empty clothes, the flash of bone so pale and curving. But I would give them nothing, and my body did not betray me, for which I was grateful. For what I felt was the return of a long-quiescent rage, and the certain conviction that this was the most human my father had ever appeared to me.

We've got a real irony here... We have politicians selling access to something we all own- our government. And then we have broadcasters selling access to something we all own- our airwaves. It's a terrible system.

Now art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.

Are we out of step with the administration because we do not comport completely to their political point of view?... So they criticize us for it. It goes with the territory, and if we get a groundswell we begin to look at ourselves.

When you publish a book, it's the world's book. The world edits it.

She won't go quietly, that's the problem. I'll fight to the end, because I believe that I have a role to fulfill, and I've got two children to bring up.

'Hey Booker, Got Milk?' (During a fight with Booker T in a grocery store)

'Pricecheck on jackass!!' (To Booker T after beating him up in a grocery store.)

'I don't know about 'Humanitarian of the Year,' Vince, but if you think it should be 'Jackass of the Year,' gimme a hell yeah!'

The American People will take Socialism, but they won't take the label. I certainly proved it in the case of EPIC. Running on the Socialist ticket I got 60,000 votes, and running on the slogan to 'End Poverty in California' I got 879,000. I think we simply have to recognize the fact that our enemies have succeeded in spreading the Big Lie. There is no use attacking it by a front attack, it is much better to out-flank them.

There used to be a time when this country's president could have delivered the same New Year's Address he had given a year before, and nobody would have noticed. Fortunately, that time has passed.

I don't mind what Congress does, as long as they don't do it in the streets and frighten the horses.

The only assurance that I can now give of the future is reference to the past. The course which I have taken in the past in connection with this rebellion must be regarded as a guaranty of the future. My past public life, which has been long and laborious, has been founded, as I in good conscience believe, upon a great principle of right, which lies at the basis of all things. The best energies of my life have been spent in endeavoring to establish and perpetuate the principles of free government, and I believe that the Government in passing through its present perils will settle down upon principles consonant with popular rights more permanent and enduring than heretofore. I must be permitted to say, if I understand the feelings of my own heart, that I have long labored to ameliorate and elevate the condition of the great mass of the American people. Toil and an honest advocacy of the great principles of free government have been my lot. Duties have been mine; consequences are God's. This has been the foundation of my political creed, and I feel that in the end the Government will triumph and that these great principles will be permanently established.