I realized that public affairs were also my affairs.
I'm responsive to my public, but I also follow my heart.
I've never personally criticized anyone else's music, but I know that the public's real problem is not the music I make but the perception that I play simple music for money only and for the notoriety and to increase my popularity.
Growing up in public is especially hard sometimes.
Essays, entitled critical, are epistles addressed to the public, through which the mind of the recluse relieves itself of its impressions.
Would that the simple maxim, that honesty is the best policy, might be laid to heart; that a sense of the true aim of life might elevate the tone of politics and trade till public and private honor become identical.
When public men indulge themselves in abuse, when they deny others a fair trial, when they resort to innuendo and insinuation, to libel, scandal, and suspicion, then our democratic society is outraged, and democracy is baffled.
There has been a strong tradition in this country that it is not the function of the military to educate the public on political issues.
The lines marking a penalty area are a disgrace to the playing fields of a public school.
We're first on executions. We're 49th in funding public education. We're in a race with Mississippi for the bottom, and we're winning.
The safest course for public officials is simply to throw all of the money in a sack.
Whatever they may be in public life, whatever their relations with men, in their relations with women, all men are rapists and that's all they are. They rape us with their eyes, their laws, their codes.
And I understand that, I testified in closed hearings over eight years because there are intelligence matters, there are sensitive matters that should not be held in a public hearing.
I was unwise enough to actually mention this in public a few times, and in fact to point out that there were two versions of the book now. One of them had somebody else's name on the cover, one had my name on the cover.
Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.