Quotes About Citizens

Citizens of the democracies are the authors of their own destinies, and what they have made they can also change and improve.

change should mean more participation—but by informed voters through institutions that are not constantly and immediately at the mercy of a majority.

In a democracy, the expert's service to the public is part of the social contract. Citizens delegate the power of decision on myriad issues to elected representatives and their expert advisers, while experts, for their part, ask that their efforts be received in good faith by a public that has informed itself enough to make reasoned judgments.

Citizens no longer understand democracy to mean a condition of political equality, in which one person gets one vote, and every individual is no more and no less equal in the eyes of the law. Rather, Americans now think of democracy as a state of actual equality, in which every opinion is as good as any other on almost any subject under the sun.

When citizens are always performing for each other, they expect accolades and instant psychic rewards, even if they have not earned them, and they become angry and resentful if they do not get them.

What is different today, and especially worrisome when it comes to the creation of educated citizens, is how the protective, swaddling environment of the modern university infantilizes students and thus dissolves their ability to conduct a logical and informed argument. When feelings matter more than rationality or facts, education is a doomed enterprise.

This is why the collapse of the relationship between experts and citizens is a dysfunction of democracy itself. The abysmal literacy, both political and general, of the American public is the foundation for all of these problems. It is the soil in which all of the other dysfunctions have taken root and prospered, with the 2016 election only its most recent expression.

Populism actually reinforces this elitism, because the celebration of ignorance cannot launch communications satellites, negotiate the rights of US citizens overseas, or provide for effective medications, all of which are daunting tasks even the dimmest citizens now demand and take for granted. Faced with a public that has no idea how most things work, experts likewise disengage, choosing to speak mostly to each other rather than to laypeople.

Thomas P. O'Neill (Jr.)

There are two distinct classes of men in the nation, those who pay taxes, and those who receive and live upon the taxes.

It is important that we should never lose sight of this distinction. We must not confuse the peoples with their governments...

The guilt of a government is the crime of a whole country;

a government which cannot preserve the peace, is no government at all, and in that case we pay our money for nothing;

the strength of government does not consist of anything within itself, but in the attachment of a nation, and the interest which a people feel in supporting it.

Whatever the form or constitution of government may be, it ought to have no other object than the general happiness.

The government of a free country, properly speaking, is not in the persons, but in the laws.

And a government which cannot preserve the peace is no government at all, and in that case we pay our money for nothing;

Now our job, our duty, our responsibility to ensure the safety and security of our citizens cannot be complete unless we guarantee health care security for our citizens.

Everything that he was saying sounded incredible, but Frank knew enough about politics to know that governments got away with what they did because they counted on ordinary citizens dismissing events as being too incredible and implausible.

Even as late as the end of June, astonishingly few French citizens were actively resisting the German occupation. Before the summer ended, the organized resistance would swell to perhaps a couple of hundred thousand people in all of France—less than 3 percent of the population, no matter what tales of bravado anyone told later.

Our political process appears to be a toxic dance of mutually assured destruction that takes all the citizens down with you, and that can't be right. So I've prepared a little experiment.

Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.

I am proud of the work we have accomplished for the citizens of Northeast Florida and our nation during my time in Congress.

It's not good enough to announce 'I know my rights' if you aren't prepared to accept that you have responsibilities to society and your fellow citizens as well. And if people don't live up to those responsibilities to our society, they will not be able to hide behind their rights.