Quotes About Citizens

Now Jefferson and Madison lent their imprimatur to an outmoded theory in which the Constitution became a compact of the states, not of their citizens. By this logic, states could refrain from complying with federal legislation they considered unconstitutional.

Washington contrived a statesmanlike compromise between Hamilton's truculence and Randolph's civility. He issued a proclamation telling the insurgents to desist by September 1, or the government would send in a militia. At the same time, he announced that a three-man commission would confer with citizens

I will not hesitate to exhaust the powers thus vested in the Executive…for the purpose of securing to all citizens of the United States the peaceful enjoyment of the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution and laws. —ULYSSES S. GRANT, Proclamation, May 3, 1871

We are a nation that has a government--not the other way around.

One legislator accused me of having a 19th-century attitude on law and order. That is a totally false charge. I have an 18th-century attitude. That is when the Founding Fathers made it clear that the safety of law-abiding citizens should be one of the government's primary concerns.

Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives

Governor Evans had himself given the order that citizens could "shoot on site" any Indian who trespassed

In addition to all that, a man may have any opinions he likes without that being any of the sovereign's business. Having no standing in the other world, the sovereign has no concern with what may lie in wait for its subjects in the life to come, provided they are good citizens in this life.

The United States is not unique among nations in forging an origin myth, but most of its citizens believe it to be exceptional among nation-states, and this exceptionalist ideology has been used to justify appropriation of the continent and then domination of the rest of the world.

It would be truer to say that the citizens' self-respect, in the two countries, is tied up with different attitudes; in our country it depends on his management of his own affairs and in Japan it depends on repaying what he owes to accredited benefactors.

Once in a while a story is spectacular enough to break through and attract media attention, but the swell quickly subsides into the general glut of bad news over which we, as citizens, have so little control.

I believe now, as I alway have, that America's strength is in 'We the People.'

Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at individual discretion... in private self-defense.

The nation is only as strong as the collective strength of its individuals.

The survival of American democracy depends less on the size of its armies than on the capacity of its individual citizens to rely... on the strength of their own thought.

The Roman legions were formed in the first instance of citizen soldiers, who yet had been made to submit to a rigid discipline, and to feel that in that submission lay their strength.

A government for the people must depend for its success on the intelligence, the morality, the justice, and the interest of the people themselves.

Town-meetings are to liberty what primary schools are to science;

The whole people contracts the habits and tastes of the magistrate.

Men are much more forcibly struck by those inequalities which exist within the circle of the same class, than with those which may be remarked between different classes. It is more easy for them to admit slavery, than to allow several millions of citizens to exist under a load of eternal infamy and hereditary wretchedness.

The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democracy, from beneath which the old aristocratic colors sometimes peep.

In a democracy private citizens see a man of their own rank in life who becomes possessed of riches and power in a few years; this spectacle excites their surprise and envy, and they are led to inquire how the person who was yesterday very equal is today their ruler. To attribute his rise to his talents or his virtues is unpleasant; for it is tacitly to acknowledge that they are themselves less virtuous and less talented than he was.

Democratic institutions strongly tend to promote the feeling of envy.

No form or combination of social polity has yet been devised to make an energetic people out of a community of pusillanimous and enfeebled citizens.