Quotes About Citizenship

Today, there are those who hallucinate that a democratic and Jewish state is only democratic for the Jews.

I believe in giving everybody a chance to join our party. Over time, we realized that some joined expecting what the party can do for them... We want the people, when they come and join the PSP, to do something for the country and not for themselves.

Whenever she walked along the streets of Manhattan, she looked at all the different faces coming toward her and, despite their different features and colors, she regarded them all as Americans.

While the United States has benefited from diversity, it cannot build its national identity around diversity as such. Identity has to be related to substantive ideas such as constitutionalism, rule of law, and human equality. Americans respect these ideas; the country is justified in excluding from citizenship those who reject them.

At the time of the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1788, only white males with property had full political rights; the circle of rights bearers gradually expanded to include white men without property, African-Americans, indigenous people, and women.

Successful state building is dependent, therefore, on the prior existence of a sense of national identity that serves as a locus of loyalty to the state itself, rather than to the social groups underlying it.

So the possibility of a basic bargain on immigration reform has existed for some time. In a trade, the government would undertake serious enforcement measures to control its borders, in return for an agreement to give undocumented aliens without criminal records a path toward citizenship.10 This bargain might actually receive majority support among the American public, but hard-core immigration opponents are dead set against any form of "amnesty

In democratic societies we assert, with the American Declaration of Independence, that "all men are created equal." Yet historically, we have disagreed on who qualifies as "all men." At the time that the declaration was signed, this circle did not include white men without property, black slaves, indigenous Americans, or women.

This seemingly minor point is in fact important in distinguishing Chinese and Western legal concepts: the latter see natural persons as bearers of rights and duties independently of any action of the state, whereas in China citizenship is something conferred on individuals by the state.

The remedy is to define larger and more integrative national identities that take account of the de facto diversity of existing liberal democratic societies.

Para mantenerse libres hay que tener los ojos siempre abiertos puestos sobre el gobierno. Hay que espiar sus pasos, oponerse a sus atentados, reprimir sus desvíos… [el objetivo] es ejercer un control perpetuo sobre los hombres que llegan al poder. Aunque vosotros los hayáis elegido, controlarlos es un deber de todos en todo momento.

All of our people all over the country—except the pure-blooded Indians—are immigrants or descendants of immigrants, including even those who came over here on the Mayflower.

We have learned that we cannot live alone, at peace; that our own well-being is dependent on the well-being of other nations, far away. We have learned that we must live as men, and not as ostriches, nor as dogs in the manger. We have learned to be citizens of the world, members of the human community.

Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.

Taxes, after all, are dues that we pay for the privileges of membership in an organized society.

We have learned that we cannot live alone, at peace; that our own well-being is dependent on the well-being of nations far away. We have learned that we must live as men, and not as ostriches nor as dogs in the manger. We have learned to be citizens of the world, members of the human community.

Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves and the only way they could do this is by not voting.

In a composite nation like ours, as before the law, there should be no rich, no poor, no high, no low, no white, no black, but common country, common citizenship, equal rights and a common destiny.

Non c'è dittatura senza fedeltà, la fedeltà è la solida roccia sulla quale si erige lo Stato totalitario, che senza di essa affonderebbe nella sabbia; per la democrazia è necessaria invece una certa mancanza di fedeltà, una attitudine più svolazzante, più irresoluta, più fantasiosa.

You can't kill an American Citizen without benefit of a trial." "I can if you're on the list, traitor." "LIST? What list? What the hell are you talking about?" BLACK LIST, July 24

The gospel of grace nullifies our adulation of televangelists, charismatic superstars, and local church heroes. It obliterates the two-class citizenship theory operative in many American churches. For grace proclaims the awesome truth that all is gift. All that is good is ours, not by right, but by the sheer bounty of a gracious God.

Where is it written that if you don't like religion you are somehow disqualified from being a legitimate American? What was Mark Twain, a Russian?

Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man?

The fate of the country... does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning.