Public issue

“ There is, first, a strong interest in debate on public issues, and, second, a strong interest in debate about those persons who are in a position significantly to influence the resolution of those issues. ”

“ Whatever division of the public judgment may have existed in relation to particular measures of the government, all must agree, one should think, in the opinion, that in its general course it has been eminently productive of public happiness. ”

“ Thus here the public opinion of the people never can fail to be a direct rule for the government, and reciprocally the word of the government has the weight of a fact by the people's support. When your government speaks, it is the people which speaks. ”

“ Promote then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.
In offering to you, my countrymen, these counsels of an old and affectionate friend, I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting impression I could wish; that they will control the usual current of the passions, or prevent our nation from running the course, which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations. ”

“ This power, which is popularly termed public sentiment is, in this country at least, the most potential agency which can be brought to bear upon the errors or vices of the age, in whatever form they may be presented. ”

“ As an important consequence a new and unprecedented interest has been awakened in public affairs, which are now better known and more extensively discussed and judged tending to the formation of a sound public opinion which is so potent and salutary a force in the modern world. ”

“ it has invented and established Public Opinion, which is an attempt to organise the ignorance of the community, and to elevate it to the dignity of physical force. ”

“ But it must not be forgotten that this is a Republic to be governed by a well-informed public opinion, and that this public opinion is to receive its light through the freest possible discussion and criticism of public affairs and policies and men. ”

“ Can there then be a more stringent public duty for every man—and the greater the intelligence the greater the duty—than to take care, by all the influence he can command, that the country, the majority, public opinion, shall have a mind to do only what is just and pure and humane? ”

“ Make every public servant feel that he is acting in the open and under scrutiny; and, above all things else, take these great fundamental questions of your lives with which political platforms concern themselves and search them through and through by every process of debate. ”

“ Dear Sir:
On my arrival in this city I am more convinced than I was of the necessity of giving a just state of facts to the public. The current runs strongly against Congress, and in a great measure for want of information. When facts are explained they make an impression, and incline to conclusions more favorable to us. ”

“ Every function superadded to those already exercised by the government, causes its influence over hopes and fears to be more widely diffused, and converts, more and more, the active and ambitious part of the public into hangers-on of the government, or of some party which aims at becoming the government. ”

“ It is, therefore, my duty, as a good American citizen, to help form public opinion in the community in which I live in order that all citizens may hold intelligent, just, and humane views on governmental questions and endeavor to have such views embodied in our laws. ”

“ We know, from the fundamental principles of republics, that public opinion gives the tone to every action of the Government—the laws ought to correspond with the habits and manners, nay, I may almost add, wishes of the people. ”

“ Every wise man, in and out of government, will endeavor, therefore, to promote the ascendency of public virtue and public principle, and to restrain as far as practicable, in the actual operation of our institutions, the influence of selfish and private interests. ”

“ The grand measures of public policy he is in favor of, oft enumerated, and ably sustained by himself, will, as we conceive, bear the test of the most rigid scrutiny. They have frequently been discussed and pronounced sound and of whole some tendency by the most talented and distinguished men of the age. ”

“ We promise the public a paper worthy of their patronage, and our people one that will be ever vigilant in their defence when their rights, privileges and opportunities are trammelled, We shall be no less active in speaking our opinion concerning any faults, short-comings, and indiscretions of our own people. ”

“ Many a time you have given the people to understand that you regarded public office as a public trust. When you oppose what is generally looked upon as demanded by the public voice as well as the public interest, it must be expected that you have weighty reasons for it — reasons corresponding with your character and station. ”

“ Because the public of course is interested in legislation and upon what you premise it-upon what is the need for it. It all fits in. Now my position has been, and there are those, who, I'm sure, disagree with me, when we hold a public hearing it is public. ”

“ I venture to say that the levity with which bad precedents are sometimes employed and admitted as arguments in the discussion of public questions bids fair to produce a confusion of moral, legal and political notions which will have a most sinister influence upon the popular conscience. ”

“ Concerted action will extend the benefits of this individual action to the creation of Public Opinion in the Community, in Society at large. As all great powers, Public Opinion is courted; this courtship is "Propaganda." ”

“ The remarks are not made with a view to drawing a conclusion. They are offered with a view to outlining a problem: What is the public? If there is a public, what are the obstacles in the way of its recognizing and articulating itself? Is the public a myth? Or does it come into being only in periods of marked social transition when crucial alternative issues stand out, such as that between throwing one’s lot in with the conservation of established institutions or with forwarding new tendencies? ”

“ A VERY small number of books on political and social subjects have exerted a profound and continuous influence both upon the development of thought and upon the determination of the policies adopted regarding public questions. ”

“ It is not too much to require that what the wisest of mankind, those who are best entitled to trust their own judgment, find necessary to warrant their relying on it, should be submitted to by that miscellaneous collection of a few wise and many foolish individuals, called the public. ”

“ In any attempt to understand the nature of public opinion and its relation to social control, it is important to investigate, first of all, the agencies and devices which have come into practical use in the effort to control, enlighten, and exploit it. ”

“ You have yourselves witnessed these things, as I have. it is too soon to assess them; and we who stand in the midst of them and are part of them are less qualified than men of another generation will be to say what they mean, or even what they have been. But some great outstanding facts are unmistakable and constitute, in a sense, part of the public business with which it is our duty to deal. ”

“ The character and origins of public opinion, the factors that make up the individual mind and the group mind must be understood if the profession of public relations counsel is to be intelligently practiced and its functions and possibilities accurately estimated. Society must understand the fundamental character of the work he is doing, if for no other reason than its own welfare. ”

“ There is also, we believe, a growing disposition on the part of the people at large to avoid the unmeaning displays we refer to; and it only needs the repeated and decided expression of public opinion, to secure a large measure of beneficial reform in this direction. ”

“ The manner in which public opinion issues from the interaction of individuals, and moral judgments are formed that eventually become the basis of law, may be gathered from the way in which the process goes on in the daily life about us. ”

“ and never could that strength be so directly traced to the virtue and intelligence of the people,—to that general enlightenment and prompt efficiency of public opinion possible only under the influence of a political framework like our own. ”

“ The public relations counsel works with that vague, little-understood, indefinite material called public opinion.
Public opinion is a term describing an ill-defined, mercurial and changeable group of individual judgments. Public opinion is the aggregate result of individual opinions—now uniform, now conflicting—of the men and women who make up society or any group of society. In order to understand public opinion, one must go back to the individual who makes up the group. ”

“ At present individuals are lost in the crowd. In politics it is almost a triviality to say that public opinion now rules the world. The only power deserving the name is that of masses, and of governments while they make themselves the organ of the tendencies and instincts of masses. This is as true in the moral and social relations of private life as in public transactions. ”

“ The influence, if any, is of a different sort, arising from dignity of life and conduct, abstinence from political contests, exclusive devotion to the advancement of the law, and a firm administration of justice; circumstances, which are felt more by the profession, than they can be expected to be praised by the public. ”

“ Public opinion sets bounds to every government, and is the real sovereign in every free one. ”

“ It is natural that the manner in which the popular mind proceeded from conclusion to conclusion, should have found its best illustration in the political discussions which accompanied and aided the progress of public opinion. ”

“ If your public affairs, as they are directed in your Public Councils, were uncontrolled by the sentiments of private men, they would soon be coming down into our streets and into our private dwellings with a most disastrous influence. ”

“ I wish that all the citizens of my country could come into contact with the public men whom I have met, and catch something of the earnestness with which they are applying themselves to the solution of the municipal problems that press upon the present generation. ”

“ Its discussions chiefly gather around minor points of administration; rarely do they reveal any degree of constructive originality. Yet the public spirit which is the life of a community needs continual stimulus; and this stimulus is dependent on discussion. ”

“ Let us hold fast the great truth, that communities are responsible, as well as individuals; that no government is respectable, which is not just; that without unspotted purity of public faith, without sacred public principle, fidelity, and honor, no mere forms of government, no machinery of laws, can give dignity to political society. ”

“ And public opinion is stronger than the legislature, and nearly as strong as the ten commandments: I therefore yield to popular clamor when I discuss the profit of my garden. ”

“ In the body politic, the first thing which lives and moves is the intention of the people, having in it the blood, that is, the prudential care and provision for the public good, which it transmits and communicates to the head, as to the principal part, and to all the rest of the members of the said body politic, whereby it subsists and is invigorated. ”

“ What I have said has been said to meet arguments, doubts, and difficulties which have paralyzed public opinion and public action here; which arguments, doubts and difficulties are the less easy to combat because they have been rather hinted at than avowed. ”