Quotes About Citizens

At bottom, today's Democrats from Baucus to Waters are united in only two beliefs, and they demand that American citizens believe in only two things: diversity and rights.

America did not teach men the idea of freedom; she taught them how to practice it.

But when the social entity grows large, becomes a megalopolis, a state, a federation, then the governing machine grows remote, impersonal, even inhuman. It takes money from us for purposes we do not seem to sanction; it treats us as abstract statistics; it controls an army; it supports a police force whose function does not always appear to be protective.

The discipline imposed on citizens by the bourgeois state makes them into subjects, people who delude themselves that they exert an influence on the course of events.

Where is Amphitheus? Come and speak with me. AMPHITHEUS Here I am. DICAEOPOLIS Take these eight drachmae and go and conclude a truce with the Lacedaemonians for me, my wife and my children; I leave you free, my dear citizens, to send out embassies and to stand gaping in the air.

Aussi, dans la démocratie, les pauvres sont-ils souverains à l'exclusion des riches, parce qu'ils sont les plus nombreux, et que l'avis de la majorité fait loi. Voilà donc un des caractères distinctifs de la liberté ; et les partisans de la démocratie ne manquent pas d'en faire une condition indispensable de l'État.

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

When states are democratically governed according to law, there are no demagogues, and the best citizens are securely in the saddle; but where the laws are not sovereign, there you find demagogues. The people become a monarch... such people, in its role as a monarch, not being controlled by law, aims at sole power and becomes like a master.

Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.

The idea of a king is to be a protector of the rich against unjust treatment, of the people against insult and oppression. Whereas a tyrant, as has often been repeated, has no regard to any public interest, except as conducive to his private ends; his aim is pleasure, the aim of a king, honor. Wherefore also in their desires they differ; the tyrant is desirous of riches, the king, of what brings honor. And the guards of a king are citizens, but of a tyrant mercenaries.

Lawgivers make the citizens food by training them in habits of right action - this is the aim of all legislation, and if it fails to do this it is a failure.

It is accepted as democratic when public offices are allocated by lot; and as oligarchic when they are filled by election. -- Aristotle, Politics, Book IV

Hence, in a constitutional government the fighting-men have the supreme power, and those who possess arms are the citizens

It is more proper that law should govern than any one of the citizens: upon the same principle, if it is advantageous to place the supreme power in some particular persons, they should be appointed to be only guardians, and the servants of the laws.

Aristotle states that only one thing could justify monarchy, and that was if the virtue of the king and his family were greater than the virtue of the rest of the citizens put together. Tactfully

En todo Estado es preciso distinguir dos cosas: la cantidad y la calidad de los ciudadanos. Por calidad entiendo la libertad, la riqueza, las luces, el nacimiento; por cantidad entiendo la preponderancia numérica. La calidad puede estar en una parte de los elementos políticos, y la cantidad encontrarse en otra; y así las gentes de nacimiento oscuro

El cuerpo político sólo debe componerse de ciudadanos armados. En cuanto al censo, no es posible fijar la cantidad de una manera absoluta e invariable; pero debe dársele la base más ancha posible, para que el número de los que tengan parte en el gobierno sobrepuje al de los que queden excluidos de él.

First rule of government of the people, by the people, for the people: Never tell the people!

Just remember, the mass of the people in China have little or no idea what their leaders are up to, and even less control.

I believe we have neglected to see that terrorism is just a convenient excuse for those in power to gently instruct us to go quietly into that good night of being compliant and unrevolutionary citizens who willingly become subjugated to authority.

The state demands the utmost obedience and sacrifice of its citizens, but at the same time, it treats them as children through an excess of secrecy, and a censorship of news and expression of opinion, which render the minds of those who are, thus, intellectually repressed, defenseless against every unfavorable situation, and every wild rumor.

In our opinion, there is no public good other than one that assures the citizens' private good; we judge institutions from the point of view of the concrete opportunities they give to individuals.

This is what democratic societies understand; they strive to confirm citizens in the feeling of their individual value; the whole ceremonious apparatus of baptism, marriage, and burial is the collectivity's homage to the individual; and the rites of justice seek to manifest society's respect for each of its members considered in his particularity.

It was a town of perhaps ten thousand souls, inhabiting about twenty thousand bodies—the proportion of soul-possession may be too high.