Quotes About Citizens

We were mugged by some senior citizens on the way from the chopper to the main gate, but no great harm done; they were using vintage revolvers.

Who could blame the citizens of Massachusetts for rejoicing when spring is so close at hand? Winter in New England is merciless and cruel, a season that instills a particular melancholy in its residents and a hopelessness that is all but impossible to shake.

I believe all Americans are born with certain inalienable rights. As a child of God, I believe my rights are not derived from the constitution. My rights are not derived from any government. My rights are not denied by any majority. My rights are because I exist. They were given to me and each of my fellow citizens by our creator, and they represent the essence of human dignity.

There are, however, people in this world who seldom pick up a newspaper, people who, when watching television, sneer in displeasure and change channels at the first glimpse of an anchorperson. While such willfully uninformed citizens are rare, emerging from seclusion only to serve on juries in trials of great national significance, they do exist.

Great structures or basic physical attributes—location along rivers, oceans, trade routes, attractive green space, or even freeway interchanges—can help start a great city, or aid in its growth, but cannot sustain its long-term success. In the end, a great city relies on those things that engender for its citizens a peculiar and strong attachment, sentiments that separate one specific place from others.52

I don't think it's a coincidence that this crisis in paying attention has taken place at the same time as the worst crisis of democracy since the 1930s. People who can't focus will be more drawn to simplistic authoritarian solutions--and less likely to see clearly when they fail. A world full of attention-deprived citizens alternating between Twitter and Snapchat will be a world of cascading crises where we can't get a handle on any of them.

Swiss citizens could see now that U.S.-style drug crackdowns had brought chaos to their streets—and after the government provided a legal route to heroin, the chaos vanished. So they argued that the drug war means disorder, while ending the drug war means slowly restoring order.

The fact that so many of your people are today residents and citizens of the United States, lending their influence to our civic and economic life, which has meant so much to our development.

Napoleon's emancipation of the Jews had a number of unforeseen consequences as well. He got his first inkling of what they were when he passed through Strasbourg on his way back to Paris after the battle of Jena. The citizens of Strasbourg, who now had to accept the Jews, who up to that time had been merely tolerated as resident aliens, as their equals, complained to Napoleon that the Jews used their new-found status as citizen to cheat Strasbourg's Christian population.

It is possible to be so worried about the time (chronos) for something—such as the return of Christ—that we miss the time (kairos) for something—such as living like citizens of the kingdom of God.

in those days they weren't citizens as we know them, but old landowning families with vast estates of fields and meadows.

But like the crusaders, who in the name of piety had carried out that dreadful massacre in Jerusalem, there were many citizens who failed to hear in those penitential sermons a call to mend their ways, and instead learnt to hate all those who didn't share their faith.

We may still contrive to raise three cheers for democracy, although at present she only deserves two.

Legislators represent people, not trees or acres.

Legislators represent people, not trees or acres. Legislators are elected by voters, not farms or cities or economic interests. As long as ours is a representative form of government, and our legislatures are those instruments of government elected directly by and directly representative of the people, the right to elect legislators in a free and unimpaired fashion is a bedrock of our political system.

Governments should not possess instruments of coercion and violence denied to their citizens.

To travel in a foreign country is but to touch its surface. Under the guidance of a novelist of genius we penetrate to the secrets of a nation, and talk the very language of its citizens.

The death-knell of the republic had rung as soon as the active power became lodged in the hands of those who sought, not to do justice to all citizens, rich and poor alike, but to stand for one special class and for its interests as opposed to the interests of others.

I recognize that at the same time that I am a victim, I am also a fool. But my stupidity is due to my isolation, and that's why I say to my fellow citizens: Let's raise our heads; we only trust ourselves; let us say: let there be freedom, and freedom will be!

It is necessary, either that the government devours the country, or that the country absorbs the government.

There is only one republic to which I belong, of which we are citizens, we, honest people, who do not aspire, but who pay for the irreverent national domesticity. The Republic is us, it is the real France, the exploitable and exploited material; the priest of all these frenzied republics, of all those parties that have the property of others for dreams and laziness for idols.

The new world of communication is a blessing for the citizens of the world trained to think critically and knowledgeable about history. But what about citizens who have been seduced by the world of life as entertainment and commerce? They have been educated, in good part, by a world in which negative emotional provocation is the rule rather than the exception and where the best solutions for a problem have to do primarily with short-term self-interests. Can they really be blamed?

This was Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica ("big nose"). A senior politician who had held all the great offices of state and was now pontifex maximus, or high priest, he had a high opinion of himself: at a noisy public meeting, he once said, "Be quiet, please, citizens. I know more about the public interest than you do.

He had become a well-loved figure in Apollonia and many of its citizens came to his house begging him to stay.