Quotes About Citizens

Drafting a constitution is only the first step. The constitution has to be granted legitimacy by open discussion and a fair, representative referendum.

The people of New Jersey stepped up. They shared in the sacrifice. You know what else they did? They rewarded politicians who lead instead of politicians who pandered.

We are taking the steps necessary to be ready to send whatever assistance is requested of us, and we are preparing to receive citizens who seek refuge in our state.

All of this suggests that while citizens became more comfortable with President Bush after September 11 and thought him to have the requisite leadership skills, they continue to harbor doubts about his priorities, loyalties, interests, and policies.

We should drop the bizarre American fiction that corporations are people, enjoying all the rights of citizens, including unfettered campaign donations as a form of free speech. Indeed, corporations possess greater rights than do people, as they cannot be jailed or executed, while citizens can and do suffer those fates. As the legal historian Zephyr Teachout has observed, the founders would have considered corporate campaign spending the essence of political corruption.

Or is it the other way around—are they supposed to serve us? Let us resolve to ask that far-reaching question again: For whom does America exist? This time around, there can be only one possible answer.

An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens . . . There has never been a moment of my life in which I should have relinquished for it the enjoyments of my family, my farm, my friends and books.

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

The people are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

I think it is a great error to consider a heavy tax on wines as a tax on luxury. On the contrary, it is a tax on the health of our citizens.

The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government

A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inferences

Governments are republican only in proportion as they employ the will of the people and execute it.

A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.

Choice by the people themselves is not generally distinguished for its wisdom.

The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers wthout government, I should not hesita

The happiness and prosperity of our citizens is the only legitimate object of government.

We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.

The relationship between experts and citizens is not "democratic." All people are not, and can never be, equally talented or intelligent. Democratic societies, however, are always tempted to this resentful insistence on equality, which becomes oppressive ignorance if given its head.

When students become valued clients instead of learners, they gain a great deal of self-esteem, but precious little knowledge; worse, they do not develop the habits of critical thinking that would allow them to continue to learn and to evaluate the kinds of complex issues on which they will have to deliberate and vote as citizens.

Liberal democracy relies on resilient, civic-minded citizens who think themselves to be members of a tolerant and safe community.

Liberal democracy depends on knowledge and virtue, and both of these are now in short supply among the citizens of the developed world.