Quotes About Citizenship

The president - every president - works for us. We don't work for him. We sometimes lose track of this, or rather get the balance wrong. Respect is due and must be palpable, but now and then you have to press, to either force them to be forthcoming or force them to reveal that they won't be.

I wanted to acknowledge my U.S. heritage and to belong to it more closely. Having said that, I am certainly British by formation and education and readily think of London as home. I had never lived in the U.S. till 2007.

People born in Puerto Rico are U.S. citizens - except for the teeny, tiny, mind-boggling fact that if you live in Puerto Rico, you are not allowed to cast a vote in the election for president. That tiny fact starts to get bigger when you realize that electing our own leaders is the whole reason that we have a country in the first place.

The American people are sick and tired of this 'lesser evil' garbage they get fed every election year. Both the Democrats and the Republicans do the same evils once they're in office.

You ask men in office to be honest; I ask them to serve the public.

As a citizen of this country, I've got to be honest to the people of South Africa.

My parents, fleeing a repressive regime in the Dominican Republic, were embraced by this country and taught us to love it in return. After my father served proudly in the U.S. Army, they settled in Buffalo, N.Y., and were able to live the American Dream.

Tolerance has to be shown by those who come to this country for a new way of life. If you are not prepared to become Australian and give this country your undivided loyalty, obey our laws, respect our culture and way of life, then I suggest you go back where you came from.

On identity politics: "The hyphenated American is ridiculous. But that's what we have to put up with. I think that any person that's in the United States is better off here than they would be where they came from.

Be advised my passport's green. No glass of ours was ever raised to toast the Queen.

All I wanted was for the public to be able to have a say in how they are governed. That is a milestone we left a long time ago.

Our constitutional democracy demands our participation, all the time.

America beats on you so hard the whole time. You are constantly being pummeled by other people's rights and their sense of patriotism.

I have a hard time imagining a country or a government where I would say, "Oh, this is good," where I could live under a government that I respect for a day or a week, even to see what it feels like.

Canadians still spend so much time discussing what it means to be Canadian.

You can't take 11 [million people ] at one time and just say, boom, you're gone.

It takes a long time to build democracy, to build freedom.

And the first thing we have to do is vote. Hey, no, not just once in a while. Not just when my husband or somebody you like is on the ballot. But in every election at every level, all of the time.

A man can't get his rights in a govment like this. Sometimes I've a mighty notion to just leave the country for good and all.

la educación debería proporcionarnos los elementos necesarios para desenvolvernos de manera eficaz en ese diálogo multinacional, como "ciudadanos del mundo

The ability to detect fallacy is one of the things that makes democratic life decent.

In the days ahead we must not consider it unpatriotic to raise certain basic questions about our national character.

Democracy transformed from thin paper to thick action is the greatest form of government on earth.

How often have the frustrations of second-class citizenship and humiliating status led us into blind outrage against each other and the real cause and course of our dilemma been ignored?