User:BD2412/Public affairs

Public affairs

• My rule, in which I have always found satisfaction, is, never to turn aside in public affairs through views of private interest; but to go straight forward in doing what appears to me right at the time, leaving the consequences with Providence.
  • Benjamin Franklin, letter to Mrs. Jane Mecom, December 30, 1770.—The Works of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Jared Sparks, vol. 7, p. 497 (1838).

• An Athenian citizen does not neglect the state because he takes care of his own household; and even those of us who are engaged in business have a very fair idea of politics. We alone regard a man who takes no interest in public affairs, not as a harmless, but as a useless character, and if few of us are originators, we are all sound judges of a policy.
  • Thucydides, "Funeral Speech of Pericles," book 2, section 40.—Thucydides Translated into English, 2d ed., trans. Benjamin Jowett, vol. 1, p. 129–30 (1900).