In the 1960s, if you introduced a new product to America, 90% of the people who viewed it for the first time believed in the corporate promise. Then 40 years later if you performed the same exercise, less than 10% of the public believed it was true. The fracturing of trust is based on the fact that the consumer has been let down.
The reality in Iraq is that we are creating new terrorists and severely damaging the public impression of the United States in the Muslim world.
My expertise was in public finance, particularly corporate taxation, since I had worked at the US Treasury.
Public opinion is a compound of folly, weakness, prejudice, wrong feeling, right feeling, obstinacy, and newspaper paragraphs.
When I look back now I realize I was such an obnoxious kid but, you know, I went to schools like you, like a public school in New York so compared to the anarchy that was going on there, they really wouldn't - I wasn't like a bad kid. I saw people come in and punch the teachers.
Britain, along with the U.S.A., is war weary, and after the travesty of Iraq and Afghanistan, has grave misgivings in any future involvement in the Middle East. The ghost of Tony Blair and his single-minded determination to attack Iraq, at any cost, has cast a long shadow over British politics. The British public have a long collective memory.
Genes don't mean necessarily that you have got a certain strand of gene that makes you particularly acceptable as a public official.
I was born in 1947, and my generation, like its predecessors, was taught that since our achievements received little notice or credit from white America, we were not to discuss our faults, lapses, or uncertainties in public.
Public, noncommercial broadcasting is also giving kids social-emotional skills like persistence and self-control that are fundamental to success in school, not to mention in the military, the institution where I spent most of my career.
The focus of our public discourse has been on how American companies are competing with Japanese, German, and other foreign companies. What this allows us to ignore is how each of those American companies is really in competition with the families of the workers. That's the real competition.
What we have to do now is to make the public at large aware that what we're looking at is not a historical event but - and I have to be brutal and I am going to say it - a racket.
I'll never get out of politics. I have friends in public office. I have things that I want to do. You can't go back in life. I won't go back to the existence I had before of running a political consulting firm and signing up clients and advising campaigns in exactly that way.
In the midst of fighting there is no place for public debate.
From cell phones to computers, quality is improving and costs are shrinking as companies fight to offer the public the best product at the best price. But this philosophy is sadly missing from our health-care insurance system.
When people come up to me and ask for a photo, ask for an autograph, I'm like 'Me? Are you sure?' I don't consider myself to be a public figure. I just happen to be.
Hillary Clinton, because she's the Democrats' presumptive 2016 front-runner, has become the target du jour. Frankly, I don't know how public figures get through it.
I believe that the Framers of the Constitution made their intent clear when they wrote the First Amendment. I believe they wanted to keep the new government from endorsing one religion over another, not erase the public consciousness or common faith.
When I travel with my kids abroad, I am not myself, but I'm more a father who wants to protect them. Sometimes, I am even aggressive about certain things and get surprised seeing myself like that: for instance, when people want to take pictures of them. I am fine if they want to take my pictures, but they are not public property.
I have to say that I reject somewhat the distinction between something called art and something called public art. I think all art demands and desires to be seen.
This is a public statement: I'm in favor of mixtapes.
I remember when 'Deadwood' had first come out, there was this whole deer-in-the-headlights sense of feeling really uncomfortable with being recognized in public.
Public radio is alive and kicking, it always has been.
Environmental concern is now firmly embedded in public life: in education, medicine and law; in journalism, literature and art.
The industry's not stupid. The industry knows that if those foods are labeled 'genetically engineered', the public will shy away and won't take them.
Nobody can make me cry in public. I'll punch them first before they make my mascara smear.
If we continue to fight the National Rifle Association on their home court, which is the legislative front, I think we'll continue to be frustrated. But when you have an ability to go directly to the public, that's a completely different field of engagement, and I think the NRA is not adept at that kind of engagement.
Second, when comparing private school and public school test scores, it's like apples and oranges. Public schools have to take everyone, but private schools can be selective. It's not accurate or fair to compare the job they do.
In the Catholic schools, they spend much less money than the public schools, and they get amazing results. Private schools spend much more money than the public schools, and they get remarkable results.
A public man must never forget that he loses his usefulness when he as an individual, rather than his policy, becomes the issue.
To imply that religious believers have no right to engage moral questions in the public square or at the ballot is simply to establish a Reichian secularism as our state faith.
While writing my memoir, 'When Skateboards Will Be Free,' I would sometimes have to pore over hours of microfilm at the New York Public Library in order to try to get one obscure detail right. For instance, was the Socialist Workers Party originally called the American Workers Party or the Workers Party of the United States?
There are, in the King case in particular, some names of confidential informants, persons to whom we promised confidentiality in return for their testimony. We have put their testimony in the public domain, but feel that their names should continue to be anonymous.
When I go out, I'm always dressed up. Not in drag but always prepared to be 'on.' Just in case somebody's going to take a picture. Everyone has a Facebook page, so no matter what, I'm prepared to service the public.
And I think that every American - this is an all-hands-on-deck moment for America. And I think it is good and important that every American is informed, understands the issues and whether I agree with them or not, comes into the public forum and we hear from them.
The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information.
The fact is we can only love what we know personally. And we cannot know much. In public affairs, in the rebuilding of civilization, something less dramatic and emotional is needed, namely tolerance.
