Quotes About Citizens

The problem is not the size of government but whom the government is for.

Capitalism has become more responsive to what we want as individual purchasers of goods, but democracy has grown less responsive to what we want together as citizens

A society where one set of religious views is imposed on a large number of citizens who disagree with them is not a democracy. It's a theocracy. Yet

Republicans want us to believe that the central issue is the size of government, but the real issue is whom government is for. Public

Companies are not citizens. They are bundles of contracts. The purpose of companies is to play the economic game as aggressively as possible. The challenge for us as citizens is to stop them from setting the rules. Keeping supercapitalism from spilling over into democracy is the only constructive agenda for change. All else, as I shall make clear, is frolic and detour.

Reform of our common life will not be led by socially responsible corporations or by enlightened CEOs. It will be led by concerned and active citizens.

In order to generate high profits and share prices, they have to attract consumers rather than serve citizens. This has transformed journalists from investigators and analysts offering serious news to "content providers" competing for attention.

Republicans want us to believe that the central issue is the size of government, but the real issue is whom government is for.

The problem is that the choice we make in the market don't fully reflect our values as citizens. We might make different choices if we understood the social consequences of our purchases or investments and if we knew all other consumers and investors would join us in forbearing from certain great deals whose social consequence were abhorrent to us.

To put it crudely, in cortical democracies citizens reason together; in limbic democracies they feel together.

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. [ West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette , 319 U.S. 624 (1943)]

Can a constitution devised centuries ago to replace a monarchy, and based upon a citizens' militia, possibly hope to run an empire whose scope is beyond anything ever dreamed of by its framers? Or must the existence of standing armies and the influx of inconceivable wealth inevitably destroy our democratic system?

They had been unable to move that vast placid mass of citizens, the ones who were satisfied with the government, whatever sort of government it might happen to be, the ones who feared rocking the boat more than they feared being devoured by the boat.

For me every ruler is alien that defies public opinion.

It's a sad day in America when foreign governments with deep pockets have more influence in our own country than our great citizens.

The question is, not what rights naturally belong to man, but how they may be most equally and effectually guarded in society.

A society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens but by how it treats its criminals.

The ultimate test of a society's freedom is not how it treats its good, obedient, compliant citizens; it's how it treats its dissidents.

For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens: as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone.

Pierre Trudeau dreamed of a society that afforded all of its citizens an equal opportunity to succeed in life - whatever their background or beliefs, whether rich or poor.

The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law.

What did he mean by "society"? The plural of human beings?

We can never get a re-creation of community and heal our society without giving our citizens a sense of belonging.

The strength of the democratic constitutional state lies precisely in its ability to close the holes social integration through the political participation of its citizens.