Quotes About Citizenship

that reproductive liberty is essential to women's political and social citizenship.

the only people qualified to help govern are those who have no interest in doing so.

By 2015 more British Muslims were fighting for Isis than for the British armed forces.

Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.

Life in freedom is not easy, and democracy is not perfect.

Democracy is not just a question of having a vote. It consists of strengthening each citizen's possibility and capacity to participate in the deliberations involved in life in society.

Although our interests as citizens vary, each one is an artery to the heart that pumps life through the body politic, and each is important to the health of democracy.

Maybe the answer to Selective Service is to start everyone off in the army and draft them for civilian life as needed.

Voting is the foundational act that breathes life into the principle of the consent of the governed.

Applause, mingled with boos and hisses, is about all that the average voter is able or willing to contribute to public life.

I have a feeling that I make a very good friend, and I'm a good mother, and a good sister, and a good citizen. I am involved in life itself - all of it. And I have a lot of energy and a lot of nerve.

We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. —Abraham Lincoln, 1862

Liberalism is still in there. The trick is getting it out. There's only one way to do that. It requires grabbing and holding onto a very good idea: that all people are equal and endowed from birth with inalienable rights and entitled to equal treatment, guaranteed by a nation of laws. This requires making the case for the nation.

If the United States were to acquire territory from Mexico, and if this territory were to enter the Union, would Mexicans become American citizens? Calhoun, now in the Senate, vehemently opposed this idea. "I protest against the incorporation of such a people," he declared. "Ours is the government of the white man.

They said, some men are too ignorant, and vicious, to share in government. Possibly so, said we; and, by your system, you would always keep them ignorant, and vicious. We proposed to give all a chance; and we expected the weak to grow stronger, the ignorant, wiser; and all better, and happier together. We made the experiment; and the fruit is before us. —Abraham Lincoln, "Fragments on Government," 1854

On July 11, Wilson asked why, if slaves were admitted as people, they weren't "admitted as Citizens." And "then why are they not admitted on an equality with White Citizens?" And, if they weren't admitted as people, "Are they admitted as property? Then why is not other property admitted into the computation?

the Constitution considered people of African descent "beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." No "negro of the African race," he ruled, could ever claim the rights and privileges of citizenship

political equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of the people.

If everyone saw himself as a citizen of the world rather than of his town, city or country, the world would be a more peaceful, better place where success in all forms is abundant and available to all.

The United States is not a nation based upon race, creed, or religion - we are a nation based upon our loyalty and allegiance to our country and her principles.

When you can carry five full dinner platters on your left arm, you should be able to vote, even if you're not eighteen.

New Jersey, in 1844, became the last state to add the qualifying male to citizen, and women who had been voting all along could not vote anymore.

I love my country but hate the government and see no one, no one who can lead us.

A volunteer is a person who can see what others cannot see; who can feel what most do not feel. Often, such gifted persons do not think of themselves as volunteers, but as citizens - citizens in the fullest sense: partners in civilization.