Public Quotes (page 56)
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Dudley had been accepted at Uncle Vernon's old private school, Smeltings...Harry, on the other hand, was going to Stonewall High, the local public high school. Dudley thought this was very funny. "They stuff people's heads down the toilet the first day at Stonewall," he told Harry. "Want to come upstairs and practice?" "No, thanks," said Harry. "The poor toilet's never had anything as horrible as your head down it - it might be sick." Then he ran, before Dudley could work out what he'd said.
J. K. Rowling
The pressure to make public retractions of past statements - there's something medieval about it. What does it mean, anyway, to 'retract' what you've said? How can anyone state categorically that a thought he once had is no longer valid? In modern times an idea can be refuted, yes, but not retracted.
Milan Kundera
Some legislators only wish to vengeance against a particular enemy. Others only look out for themselves. They devote very little time on the consideration of any public issue. They think that no harm will come from their neglect. They act as if it is always the business of somebody else to look after this or that. When this selfish notion is entertained by all, the commonwealth slowly begins to decay.
Thucydides
Every nation that has ended in tyranny has come to that end by way of good order. It certainly does not follow from this that peoples should scorn public peace, but neither should they be satisfied with that and nothing more. A nation that asks nothing of government but the maintenance of order is already a slave in the depths of its heart; it is a slave of its well-being, ready for the man who will put it in chains.
Alexis de Tocqueville
An Irish Airman foresees his Death
I Know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate
Those that I guard I do not love,
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public man, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind, ...
William Butler Yeats
With a little more patience and a little less temper, a gentler and wiser method might be found in almost every case; and the knot that we cut by some fine heady quarrel-scene in private life, or, in public affairs, by some denunciatory act against what we are pleased to call our neighbour's vices might yet have been unwoven by the hand of sympathy.
Robert Louis Stevenson
