John Dewey: “How can a public be organized, we may ask, when literally it does not stay in place?”

But in this respect he does not differ from those explicitly designated public officials who have also been known to betray the interest committed to them instead of faithfully representing it.

Nor can the liberating and confirming results of public action be construed to yield a wholesale idealization of states in contrast with other associations.

In no two ages or places is there the same public.

There are even those who hold that the presumption is always that social loss will result from agents of the public doing anything which could be done by persons in their private capacity.