Quotes About Citizens

A democratic government is only as strong as the alert conscience of its people.

I wish I enjoyed the World Cup, if only for some fleeting sense of common unity with the rest of humankind. But I simply don't get it. A huge number of my fellow citizens tune in and witness a glorious contest of ecstatic highs and heartbreaking lows. I see twenty-two millionaires fucking up a lawn.

Democratic government is no longer an exercise of arbitrary authority from one above, but is an organization for public service of the people themselves--or will be when it is really attained. In this change government ceases to be compulsion, and becomes agreement; law ceases to be authority and becomes co-ordination. When we learn the rules of whist or chess we do not obey them because we fear to be punished if we don't, but because we want to play the game.

if a majority of us see and expect netas to be service providers instead of rulers, it will trigger a huge behavioural change in the political class.

A healthy society leads to lower healthcare costs, improved productivity at work and a better quality of life for citizens. Food is a big part of public health. About time we knew what we are putting in our mouths.

People try to live within their income so they can afford to pay taxes to a government that can't live within its income.

The crime of taxation is not in the taking of it, it's in the way that it's spent.

[W]e need to build our democracy and our voting system on a rock, the rock of adding a Voting Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that applies to all states and all citizens.

Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.

Many forms of government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time...

The reason it looked simple," Smith later boasted, "was that professionals were doing it." 2 TRAITOR'S HOUSE Seoul Twenty miles to the northeast, the citizens of Seoul waited anxiously, bracing themselves for the coming Americans.

Distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality.

Several Indiana communities seemed seized by a perverse envy. When rumors spread that "a new 'death farm' where Mrs. Belle Gunness buried many of her victims" had been discovered near Warsaw, "the citizens of that place were thrown into a fever excitement" and appeared crestfallen when the story proved false.[

the worst rioting in the city's history when a mob of ten thousand citizens, outraged over the lenient sentence given to one of the killers, ransacked the courthouse and set it on fire in March 1884.

Governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed

San Jose is made up of the finest citizens of any city in the entire United States- peace loving, quiet, cultured people. ... God-fearing, law-observing, good citizens have been watching these murders increasing and have watched crime increase in this country and from the time this splendid young fellow [Brooke Hart] was murdered this vigilance committee had in mind carrying out what in their minds was real justice...

Secrecy and a free, democratic government don't mix.

The president is the representative of the whole nation and he's the only lobbyist that all the one hundred and sixty million people in the country have.

Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear." [ Special Message to the Congress on the Internal Security of the United States , August 8, 1950]

We should resolve now that the health of this nation is a national concern; that financial barriers in the way of attaining health shall be removed; that the health of all it's citizens deserves the help of all the nation.

Millions of our citizens do not now have a full measure of opportunity to achieve and to enjoy good health. Millions do not now have protection or security against the economic effects of sickness. And the time has now arrived for action to help them attain that opportunity and to help them get that protection.

If citizens followed their leaders' example throughout history, the human race would have died out centuries ago.

I became a Republican because I trust people more than I trust government.

Back then, before it became clear that democracy was best served by a drunken electorate, the bars in New York City were required to close on Election Day.