Quotes About Citizens

States are as the men, they grow out of human characters.

The agricultural population produces the bravest men, the most valiant soldiers,46 and a class of citizens the least given of all to evil designs.

Our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here, the people rule.

Government of the people by the people and for the people cannot be conducted at the bidding of one man, however great he may be.

A democracy is a government in the hands of men of low birth, no property, and vulgar employments.

The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence.

As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow-citizens, the people are confirmed by the next article in their right to keep and bear their private arms.

Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American… [T]he unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people.", Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788.

According to the same law of nature in virtue of which the smallest organism infinitely surpasses the most artistic machine, every constitution however defective which gives play to the free self-determination of a majority of citizens infinitely surpasses the most brilliant and humane absolutism; for the former is capable of development and therefore living, the latter is what it is and therefore dead.

The oikophobe and the multiculturalist are not really interested in other cultures, except as instruments with which to beat their fellow citizens.

A democracy—that is a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people; of course, a government of the principles of eternal justice, the unchanging law of God; for shortness' sake I will call it the idea of Freedom.

The government is us; we are the government, you and I.

The great body of our citizens shoot less as times goes on. We should encourage rifle practice among schoolboys, and indeed among all classes, as well as in the military services by every means in our power. Thus, and not otherwise, may we be able to assist in preserving peace in the world... The first step – in the direction of preparation to avert war if possible, and to be fit for war if it should come – is to teach men to shoot!

As a result of our wrong thinking and supineness, we American citizens tend to breed a mass of men whose interests in governmental matters are often adverse to ours, who are thoroughly drilled, thoroughly organized, who make their livelihood out of politics, and who frequently make their livelihood out of bad politics.

The man [Grant] who more than any other, save Lincoln, had changed us into a nation whose citizens were all freemen, realized entirely that these freemen would remain free only while they kept mastery over their own evil passions.

For voters what matters is what government actually delivers for them.

I think for voters what matters is the values that drive the government.

Instead of defining a few rights, Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 84, "Here, in strictness, the people surrender nothing, and as they retain everything, they have no need of particular reservations.

Too many so-called historians are really 'hysterians'; their thinking is more visceral than cerebral. When their duties as citizens clash with their responsibilities as scholars, Clio frequently takes a back seat.

Human law does not prescribe concerning all the acts of every virtue: but only in regard to those that are ordainable to the common good—either immediately, as when certain things are done directly for the common good—or mediately, as when a lawgiver prescribes certain things pertaining to good order, whereby the citizens are directed in the upholding of the common good of justice and peace.

American democracy must be a failure because it places the supreme authority in the hands of the poorest and most ignorant part of the society.

Class action lawsuits are an important part of our legal system. All citizens should have the right to band together and settle grievances with bigger companies, but that system is broken and it needs fixing.

The happiness of every country depends upon the character of its people, rather than the form of its government.

The negotiations on the future of the U.K. and the E.U. must be led... in the interest of our citizens.