Quotes About Citizenship

That's why you never hear politicians talking about 'citizens,' it's all 'taxpayers,' as though the salient fact of your relationship to the state is how much you pay. Like the state was a business and citizenship was a loyalty program that rewarded you for your custom with roads and health care.

we're problems to be solved, not citizens. That's why you never hear politicians talking about 'citizens,' it's all 'taxpayers,' as though the salient fact of your relationship to the state is how much you pay.

There was nothing illegal, for example, about naturalized American citizens like the Odessa-born billionaire oligarch Len Blavatnik and his businesses contributing millions to Mitch McConnell's GOP Senate Leadership Fund and to the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, as he did in 2016.

I know some people here think we're trying to take over, but we just want to be a part of it. We want to have our stake. This is our home, too.

It is the public schools, however, which can be made, outside the homes, the greatest means of training decent self-respecting citizens.

The President is up there in the White House for you . . . . it is not you who are here for him

Black soldiers found themselves in a dilemma. On the one hand they were being trained to risk their lives in defense of the country, while on the other hand they were being told to accept their role as inferior citizens.

As a Jew who had grown up in Germany, Einstein was acutely sensitive to such discrimination. "The more I feel an American, the more this situation pains me," he wrote in an essay called "The Negro Question" for Pageant magazine. "I can escape the feeling of complicity in it only by speaking out.

people should consider themselves citizens of the world.

I was an American citizen too; a citizen who had to watch his step, a citizen who had to distrust the police and the government, public opinion, and even the history taught in schools. It was odd that such negative thoughts would invigorate me. But knowing the truth, no matter how bad it was, gave you some chance, a little bit of an edge.

Education has increasingly been reduced to job training, preparing young people not for responsible adulthood and citizenship but for expert servitude to the corporations.

The Founders believed that liberty depended on persons with the maturity to avoid both radical self-assertion and a timid reliance on the state.

He is certainly not a good citizen who does not wish to promote, by every means in his power, the welfare of the whole society of his fellow citizens." That is Adam Smith talking, the apostle of laissez-faire.

Full participation in government and society has been a basic right of the country symbolizing the full citizenship and equal protection of all.

Senators undertake to disturb us... by reminding us of the possibility of large numbers swarming from China; but the answer to all this is very obvious and very simple. If the Chinese come here, they will come for citizenship or merely for labor. If they come for citizenship, then in this desire do they give a pledge of loyalty to our institutions; and where is the peril in such vows? They are peaceful and industrious; how can their citizenship be the occasion of solicitude?

A healthy democracy requires a decent society it requires that we are honorable, generous, tolerant and respectful.

Who gets to be an American? What does an American look like?

Willis is] asking to be treated like an American. A real American. Because, honestly, when you think American, what color do you see? White? Black? We've been here two hundred years. Why doesn't this face register as American?

He's asking to be treated like an American. A real American. Because, honestly, when you think American, what color do you see? White? Black?

We are told that the main risk factors threatening Singapore's peace and prosperity are, first, our own unreliability as citizens (we may succumb to the temptation of welfarism, communalism, individualism or emigration) and, second, our location in an unpredictable region.

I think politics is important. It's how we run our society. I think it should be natural to have an interest in the subject, and I almost don't understand why some people don't.

We could have the most amazing leaders, the best policies and the strictest laws; however, if we the people don't care about what the leaders do or about following laws, nothing good can happen.

We may want political leaders to not abuse power, but do so ourselves.

I only ask of the government to be treated as all other men are treated.