The public interest refers to the "common well-being" or "general welfare". The public interest is central to policy debates, politics, democracy and the nature of government itself. While nearly everyone claims that aiding the common well-being or general welfare is positive, there is little, if any, consensus on what exactly constitutes the public interest, or whether the concept itself is a coherent one.
Read more about Public Interest: Definitions, Problems With The Ex Post or Consequential Approach, Public Interest Law, United Kingdom Public Interest Law, Public Interest & The Government, Public Interest & Communication Policies
Famous quotes containing the words public and/or interest:
“For such will be our ruin if you, in the immensity of your public abstractions, forget the private figure, or if we in the intensity of our private emotions forget the public world. Both houses will be ruined, the public and the private, the material and the spiritual, for they are inseparably connected.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“I am pleased to think of Channing as an inhabitant of the gray town. Seven cities contended for Homer dead. Tell him to remain at least long enough to establish Concord’s right and interest in him.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)