Quotes About Citizenship

Your neighbors are not all sheep. Your political opponents are not all evil or fools. Try talking to those you despise. They are your fellow citizens. And together, we are not lesser than any greatest generation..

Our leaders, our government is us, all of us, so if they're venal and weak it's because we are.

It's probably part of my naïveté that I don't want to put the issue in political terms when it's probably irreducibly political. Something has happened where we've decided on a personal level that it's all right to abdicate our individual responsibility to the common good and let government worry about the common good while we all go about our individual self-interested business and struggle to gratify our various appetites.

I'm no Armenian. I'm an American. Well, the truth is I am both and neither. I love Armenia and I love America and I belong to both, but I am only this: an inhabitant of the earth, and so are you, whoever you are. I tried to forget Armenia but I couldn't do it.

No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

If there's only one nation in the sky, shouldn't all passports be valid for it?

The amazing fact is that America is founded on a document. It's a work in progress. It can be tested by each generation.

Starrett (1996) argued that, because we inhabit a global community, our civic responsibilities transcend the borders of nation-states.

Yes, and this is how you are a citizen: Come on. Let it go. Move on.

I want everyone to vote. I want everyone to be a part of electing officials. Because when we are not a part, when we don't have a very broad voter base, then we don't have true representation.

Man is not made for the state; the state is made for man. To deprive man of freedom is to relegate him to the status of a thing, rather than elevate him to the status of a person. Man must never be treated as a means to the end of the state, but always as an end within himself.

A powerful sense of national pride built on a belief in historical humiliation, combined with an inability to distinguish between the nation and its government, goes a long way towards explaining why many in the Chinese diaspora, including Chinese-Australian citizens, remain loyal to the PRC and defend its actions even when they conflict with Australia's values and interests.

Of course, Americans have no monopoly of patriotic enthusiasm and good faith.

The average American is nothing if not patriotic.

My country owes me nothing. It gave me, as it gives every boy and girl, a chance. It gave me schooling, independence of action, opportunity for service and honor.

Ein Individuum, das sich nicht in einen bürgerlichen Zustand zwingen [lässt], [kann] den Segnungen des Begriffs "Person" nicht teilhaftig werden.

On this side of the grave we are exiles, on that citizens. —Henry Ward Beecher

Now my opinion is that the different States have the power to make a negro a citizen under the Constitution of the United States, if they choose.

Judge Douglas has said to you that he has not been able to get from me an answer to the question whether I am in favor of negro citizenship. So far as I know, the judge has never asked me the question before.

The newspaper is in all its literalness the bible of democracy, the book out of which a people determines its conduct.

Loyalty to the true, core values and roots of democracy is what makes a true patriot, not loyalty to a symbol of the country.

America is a nation founded by immigrants and built on the ideal that anyone can be an American if he or she believes in the principles and values of the Constitution.

Anyone who wants to be part of the political process should adopt values that are compatible with democracy.