And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.
National security laws must protect national security. But they must also protect the public trust and preserve the ability of an informed electorate to hold its government to account.
Public employee unions, in their defense, say politicians have unfairly made them into simplistic bogeymen, responsible for problems that have myriad causes. Not all government workers receive generous pensions, they note.
I believe that government should confine itself to the public realm and that it should be as stripped down as possible, within reason. It should not be burdened by excess bureaucracy.
There's nothing wrong with talking out loud in public, but there is something wrong with the government sucking up all those utter instances in a database just in case they maybe want to bust you in five years.
We need a government which, yes, guarantees basic standards in public services, but which also steps in to protect people's wellbeing as they take part in our consumer democracy - particularly online.
I don't think that voters should be fixated on public policy. In a healthy republic, they wouldn't have to worry every waking hour about what their government is doing.
They have seized upon the government by bribery and corruption. They have made speculation and public robbery a science. They have loaded the nation, the state, the county, and the city with debt.
Aside from the poor example it sets, the federal government enables reckless spending on public-employee pensions by offering hope of assistance from Washington if things get bad enough.
My last public performance for money was in 1967. For free, it was 1972, with the exception of two little one-shot, one-song things. But that's just for friends, out of friendship for the people involved, and also because it was fun.
Our democracy is predicated on the belief that our government should be accessible by the people. We cannot allow ourselves to give in to fear or shy away from interacting with the public.
My greatest fear is speaking in public. You meet, like, um, people who just concentrate on me. I'd rather not have everyone focus on me.
I know terrorism is real. And I know fear of it distorts public judgment. Terrorism is like a chronic illness. We have to learn to contain it and live with it.
I'm just a guy who happens to work in public from time to time. I've built a reputation as an established comic, not as a celebrity - a celebrity is someone who is famous but doesn't do anything.
I'm just not a private person. It's not like I do things because I want things to be public; it's just that's my way of expressing myself, and I happen to be very famous.
I feel strongly about HIV/AIDS and children because I'm a famous singer, a public figure, and I'm a female and a mother. I have the responsibility and the passion to help out and do whatever I can.
Public confidence in the integrity of the Government is indispensable to faith in democracy; and when we lose faith in the system, we have lost faith in everything we fight and spend for.
I have a Christian worldview and so it shapes the way that I view issues. I don't apologize for that, and I don't think people of faith ought to shrink away from being in the public arena.
Machiavelli's teaching would hardly have stood the test of Parliamentary government, for public discussion demands at least the profession of good faith.
In Barack Obama, Democrats have put forth a man of strong religious faith who is comfortable connecting his spiritual life to his public role as a policymaker.
Americans cannot maintain their essential faith in government if there are two Americas, in which the private sector's work subsidizes the disproportionate benefits of this new public sector elite.
