It would be wonderful if the public sector were always great, or always terrible; or if the private sector were always great, or always terrible. Alas, reality is more complicated than comforting caricatures. Governments fail, and corporations fail.
Public schools were designed as the great equalizers of our society - the place where all children could have access to educational opportunities to make something of themselves in adulthood.
The great secret of doctors, known only to their wives, but still hidden from the public, is that most things get better by themselves; most things, in fact, are better in the morning.
Films and television and even comic books are churning out vast quantities of fictional narratives, and the public continues to swallow them up with great passion. That is because human beings need stories.
My parents are always a great litmus test. Based on the amount of shrieks my mother gives when we're out in public, her constant shock when somebody comes up and says something nice.
In America our public schools are intended to be religiously neutral. Our teachers and schools are neither to endorse nor to inhibit religion. I believe this is a very good thing.
The column's worked out great for me. I've gotten a ton of ego satisfaction, had a lot of fun, won a batch of prizes and occasionally done some public good.
I believe honor thy mother and father is not just a good commandment to live by, it is good public policy to govern by. That is why I feel so strongly about Medicare.
I get to hear the really good or the really bad things in the press, but I don't read it. I can afford to say that because public opinion does not drive U2's audience.
The whole, 'Is the Internet a good thing or a bad thing'? We're done with that. It's just a thing. How to maximise its civic value, its public good - that's the really big challenge.
The prison industrial complex is perhaps, at least domestically, the most striking example of us putting profit before people. It all stems from one basic misunderstanding: that the public good can be shepherded by private interests.
The public has heard the stereotypical love songs a million times, and they've heard the stereotypical life-or-death songs millions of times. It's good to mix it up a little bit.
I am used to looking good. In a way, if I thought I looked like the back end of a bus, I probably wouldn't have done 'Strictly Come Dancing' and gone out there in public.
The responsibility for good government lies not just with governments themselves but also with every other part of the system they operate in, including media, non-governmental organisations and the public.
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.
I hope this series is good work, but it is in the half-hour medium, which is limited to a kind of mediocrity that sponsors are just dying to have right now, and the public, for some reason, is unconsciously demanding.
One of the good things about the public Human Genome Project is that the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health spent a part of their budget on the ethical, legal, and social implications of their research.
It is in the public interest to know what our governors are up to. If they are up to doing good, then they are only too happy to let us know. When they are up to no good, they want that kept secret.
I recognized that information was, in many respects, like a public good, and it was this insight that made it clear to me that it was unlikely that the private market would provide efficient resource allocations whenever information was endogenous.
I knew you had to go in and audition and maybe they'd hire you, and that's where you start. I had a good understanding about press: that it's the actor's responsibility to publicize his or her films.
And if we make the process political, if we start to make it personal, we're actually going to frustrate good public policy, in terms of managing this money.
