Quotes About Citizens

En cuanto al poder, se aleja a toda vela de la calle y del mercado, de las asambleas y de los parlamentos, de los gobiernos locales y de los nacionales, más allá del alcance del control de los ciudadanos, hacia la extraterritorialidad de las redes electrónicas. En la actualidad, los principios estratégicos favoritos de los que tienen el poder son el escape, la evasión y la retirada, y su estado ideal es la invisibilidad.

I fear you do not fully comprehend the danger of abridging the liberties of the people. Nothing but the very sternest necessity can ever justify it. A government had better go to the very extreme of toleration, than to do aught that could be construed into an interference with, or to jeopardize in any degree, the common rights of its citizens.

Our government rests in public opinion. Whoever can change public opinion can change the government.

The rebel militias, the Congo's African neighbors, and many of their corporate allies have little interest in ending the country's Balkanization. They prefer a cash-in-suitcases economy to a taxed and regulated one that would give all citizens a real share of the profits from natural resources. For

The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities.

Troisième maxime. - Tout impôt doit être perçu à l'époque et selon le mode que l'on peut présumer les moins gênants pour le contribuable.

Première maxime. - Les sujets d'un Etat doivent contribuer au soutien du gouvernement, chacun le plus possible en proportion de ses facultés, c'est-à-dire en proportion du revenu dont il jouit sous la protection de l'Etat.

Quatrième maxime. - Tout impôt doit être conçu de manière à ce qu'il fasse sortir des mains du peuple le moins d'argent possible au-delà de ce qui entre dans le Trésor de l'Etat, et en même temps à ce qu'il tienne le moins longtemps possible cet argent hors des mains du peuple avant d'entrer dans ce Trésor.

I shall select judges of manslaughter, and swear them in, establish a court into all time to come. 485 Litigants, call your witnesses, have ready your proofs as evidence under bond to keep this case secure. I will pick the finest of my citizens, and come back. They shall swear to make no judgment that is not just, and make clear where in this action the truth lies.

Faith in the power of reason—the belief that free citizens can govern themselves wisely and fairly by resorting to logical debate on the basis of the best evidence available, instead of raw power—was and remains the central premise of American democracy. This premise is now under assault.

China has led the world in new tree planting; in fact, over the last several years, China has planted 40 percent as many tress as the rest of the world put together. Since 1981, all citizens of China older than age eleven (and younger than sixty) have been formally required to plant at least three trees per year. To date, China has planted approximately 100 million acres of new tress. Following China, the countries with the largest net gains in tress include the U.S., India, Vietnam, and Spain.

Thus was born an astonishing new idea that governments justify their existence only by promoting possibilities for prosperity and happiness among all those they rule over.

I guess it's what you'd call a metaphor: atomic energy has made America into a superpower, so maybe it could do the same for individual citizens – that's basically the point we're hoping you can get across for us.

Surely by now there can be few here who still believe the purpose of government is to protect us from the destructive activities of corporations. At last most of us must understand that the opposite is true: that the primary purpose of government is to protect those who run the economy from the outrage of injured citizens.

Big government is driven by two audacities: (1) the presumption that people are dumb and don't know what's good for them, (2) people are corrupt and dishonest; therefore it is incumbent upon the government to take money and spend it on citizens' behalf. On the other hand, the Tea Party has trust in the practical genius of the American people to be responsible for making decisions.

We've been involved in public policy debates long enough to know that when someone is losing an argument based on the facts, they try to change the subject. Thus liberals' hysterical reaction to the rising public opposition to their hostile government reboot of the American health care system. Thus Democrats' hostile attacks on the citizens who overwhelmed congressional town hall meetings over the August recess. It was "un-American.

The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.

As for corruption, who's more corrupt—the seller or the buyer? And how corrupt does a society have to be when its citizens need to get high to escape their reality, at the cost of bloodshed and suffering of their neighbors?

But airport security is meant mostly to impress honest citizens and insurance companies, and secondarily to catch hijackers and other crazies. There is no security against a man with his own truck and his own clipboard, and Inter-Air Forwarding was a safe, reliable financial success from the beginning.

Citizens expect quick responses to their questions or perspectives, putting enormous pressure on the machinery of government to react quickly and to get it right, which it was hardly designed to do, given its reliance on hierarchy.

Philolaus of Corinth (about 730 B.C.?) had supposedly enacted regulations ensuring that the farms at Thebes might remain the same number in perpetuity. The Corinthian Pheidon, "one of the most ancient of the lawgivers," purportedly argued that the population and the number of plots ought always to remain roughly equal. An even more shadowy figure, Phaleas the Chalcedonian, advanced the concept that all citizens of the polis ought to hold equal amounts of property.148

The life of a republic lies certainly in the energy, virtue, and intelligence of its citizens.

I believe animals should be respected as citizens of this earth. They should have the right to their own freedom, their own families, and their own life.

Democracy does not require perfect equality, but it does require that citizens share in a common life.