Quotes About Citizenship

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States uprooted more than 100,000 people of Japanese descent, most of them American citizens, and confined them in internment camps. The Solicitor General was largely responsible for the defense of those policies.

I had my own ups and downs in getting Indian citizenship. But, ultimately I got it and I am happy about it. I like India. My love is here. I am a proud Indian.

I was really upset because I was branded as an enemy alien when I'm an American.

Town meetings are not bean bag. I've had hundreds of them, and sometimes folks get upset. And that's part of America, part of our process.

We need a national service that throws us all together, the urban with the rural, the Fox News types with the MSNBC crowd. That way, Americans can get to know Americans and learn - as previous generations did - that we are all Americans.

Legislation is the only lasting solution for the men and women brought to this country through no fault of their own who want to perform the ultimate act of patriotism in defending America.

The greatest way to defend democracy is to make it work.

Some fatherlands are difficult. Germany is one of them. But it is our fatherland. Here is where we live and work.

I'm tired of hearing it said that democracy doesn't work. Of course it doesn't work. We are supposed to work it.

So, let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look over not only ourselves, but each other.

We're going to make sure that the people who run for office and get elected are the ones who are going to work for the American people.

As citizens of the United States, we are stewards of this magnificent thing called democracy.

A popular bumper sticker post-9/11, and pretty faded these days, proclaims drivers of the cars to be 'Proud to be an American.' It really should say 'Lucky to be an American,' for I doubt very much that the drivers had much say in having been born here, and are not old enough to have participated in the drafting of the Constitution.

During President George W. Bush's two terms, you couldn't drive far without seeing a particular bumper sticker: 'Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.'

I'm still ambiguously ethnic. I could be Persian - I could be anything. But I'm Italian and Jewish, so I'm a citizen of the world; that's what I prefer.

If you want to stop illegal immigration, you have to make it so that - so that the people that hire the illegal immigrants will not be in a position to hire them.

If everybody just stops caring about politics, we're going to lose the reins on our government.

I can't marry my way into citizenship like straight people can. I can get married in the state of New York where I live, but because of the Defense of Marriage Act, the federal government, which hands out visas, won't recognize my marriage.

America feels like home as much as it does here. Although it's a strange situation as I feel almost like I'm in no-man's land some of the time, because although I'm a resident, I still can't vote so I don't really have a say in what goes on where I live.

The Holocaust illustrates the consequences of prejudice, racism and stereotyping on a society. It forces us to examine the responsibilities of citizenship and confront the powerful ramifications of indifference and inaction.

The Greeks believed that it was a citizen's duty to watch a play. It was a kind of work in that it required attention, judgement, patience, all the social virtues." "And the Greek were conquered by the more practical Romans, Arthur." "Indeed, the Romans built their bridges, but they also spent many centuries wishing they were Greeks. And they, after all, were conquered by the barbarians, or by their own corrupt and small spirits.

What is a nation?

Well, that's the way democracy works. We have to build this Europe with the material we have at our disposal. And this material is national democracy.

Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.