Quotes About Citizenship

The right of every American to first-class citizenship is the most important issue of our time.

My people are Americans. My time is today.

Canada is our country. It belongs to us and we belong to it. Let us join together, in our time, and make history once again.

It's time for ordinary Americans to come out of the shadows and remind Washington every day in words and actions that we are a sovereign nation, not a sanctuary nation.

The next time someone uses denial of citizenship as a weapon or brandishes the special status conferred upon him by the accident of birth, ask him this: What have you done lately to earn it?

We are on the cusp of this time where I can say, "I speak as a citizen of the world" without others saying, "God, what a nut."

I think there are few things more patriotic than taking the time to make your country a better place.

Therefore one should speak at the same time of national citizenship and wider European citizenship.

SEC. 6. All free white persons who shall emigrate to this republic, and who shall, after a residence of six months, make oath before some competent authority that he intends to reside permanently in the same, and shall swear to support this Constitution, and that he will bear true allegiance

An India that denies itself to some of us could end up being denied to all of us. This would be a second Partition: and a partition in the Indian soul would be as bad as a partition in the Indian soil. For my sons, the only possible idea of India is that of a nation greater than the sum of its parts. An India neither Hindu nor Muslim, but both. That is the only India that will allow them to continue to call themselves Indians.

Indians were always subjects, never citizens; throughout the days of Empire, no Indian could have presumed to say 'I am British' the way a French African was encouraged to say 'Je suis français'.

Thus, early on, while the people were declared "sovereign," they were precluded from governing.

In the new model the presidency bears little resemblance to the original conception of a national leader and chief executive; it owes even less to the later ideal of the president as "the tribune of the people.

The result is that citizenship, or what remains of it, is practiced amidst a continuing state of worry. Hobbes had it right: when citizens are insecure and at the same time driven by competitive aspirations, they yearn for political stability rather than civic engagement, protection rather than political involvement.

The ideal of a democratic political culture was about cooperating in the care of common arrangements, of practices in which, potentially, all could share in deciding the uses of power while bearing responsibility for their consequences.

A medieval aphorism summed up the traditional idea of the political, "that which touches all should be approved by all.

Managed democracy is centered on containing electoral politics; it is cool, even hostile toward social democracy beyond promoting literacy, job training, and other essentials for a society struggling to survive in the global economy. Managed democracy is democracy systematized. The United States has become the showcase of how democracy can be managed without appearing to be suppressed.

We should all spend some time of our life doing service to our country. To me, I would give up a couple of years.

I was 30 when 9/11 happened and I had lived exactly 15 years of life in America, so I was half American. I was a full-fledged New Yorker.

If I can get you to a point where you can lead a full life, sustain a job, earn money for your family - you can be completely engaged as a citizen.

You can't have a country or a city or a state that's worth a damn unluss you govern within yourself in your day-to-day life.

Neither democracy nor effective representation is possible until each participant in the group...devotes a measurable part of his life to furthering its existence.

The truest test of a democracy is in the ability of anyone to act as he likes, so long as he does not injure the life or property of anyone else.

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.