Related:

• The idea that 'the public interest' supersedes private interests and rights can have but one meaning
• Are we to understand," asked the judge, "that you hold your own interests above the interests of the public?
  "I hold that such a question can never arise except in a society of cannibals." -- Ayn Rand...
• Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.
  The conduct of public affairs for private advantage. -- Ambrose Bierce "The Devil's Dictionary...
• politics, n: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.
  The conduct of public affairs for private advantage. -- Ambrose Bierce...
• We have rights, as individuals, to give as much of our own money as we please to charity
  but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of public money....
• A man will fight harder for his interests than for his rights.
  -- Napoleon Bonaparte, "Maxims" 1804-1815...
• There has grown in the minds of certain groups in this country the idea that just because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of yea
  he government and the courts are charged with guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest....
• PD /P-D/ adj. [common] Abbreviation for `public domain', applied to software distributed over Usenet and from Internet archive sites.
  Much of this software is not in fact public domain in the legal sense but travels under various copyrights granting reproduction and use rights to anyone who can snarf a copy....
• Most people seem to think that trampling individual rights is OK if it is "for the good of society as a whole.
  However, society is but a large number of individuals, and how can harming the individual parts better the whole?...