Quotes About Citizens

What's important to remember politically about this, is if you’re a state and you don’t set up an Exchange, that means your citizens don’t get their tax credits. But your citizens still pay the taxes that support this bill. So you’re essentially saying to your citizens, you’re going to pay all the taxes to help all the other states in the country. I hope that’s a blatant enough political reality that states will get their act together and realize there are billions of dollars at stake here in setting up these Exchanges, and that they’ll do it. But you know, once again, the politics can get ugly around this.

What the Supreme Court did in Citizens United is to say to these same billionaires and the corporations they control: 'You own and control the economy, you own Wall Street, you own the coal companies, you own the oil companies. Now, for a very small percentage of your wealth, we're going to give you the opportunity to own the United States Government.' This is the essence of what Citizens United is all about - and that's why it must be overturned.

It's the government's job to come in and help their citizens and guide their citizens to a brighter future and unfortunately in America that's not what's happening.

We must protect the right of citizens to practice their religions freely. As president, I will support federal and state-level legislation like the Religious Freedom Restoration Acts that protect citizens and their churches from government intrusion.

I regard the state of which I am a citizen as a public utility, like the organization that supplies me with water, gas, and electricity. I feel that it is my civic duty to pay my taxes as well as my other bills, and that it is my moral duty to make an honest declaration of my income to the income tax authorities. But I do not feel that I and my fellow citizens have a religious duty to sacrifice our lives in war on behalf of our own state, and, a fortiori, I do not feel that we have an obligation or a right to kill and maim citizens of other states or to devastate their land.

The source of the government's authority is “the consent of the governed.” This means that the government is not the ruler, but the servant or agent of the citizens; it means that the government as such has no rights except the rights delegated to it by the citizens for a specific purpose.

These are three American citizens and we really demand answers for American citizens.

The question before us is, whether people of African ancestry compose a portion of this people, and are constituent members of this sovereignty? We think they are not, and that they are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word 'citizens' in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States.

It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union.... Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less

Make no mistake. This is a war on rural America. ... It is chilling to watch people who joined the military to defend American citizens point rifles on American soil at American citizens and women and children. A sniper rifle is not due process.

[Persons] who are recognized as citizens in any one state of the Union [have] the right to enter every other state, whenever they pleased... full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might meet; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went.

We shall always place education side by side with instruction; the mind will not be cultivated at the expense of the heart. While we prepare useful citizens for society, we shall likewise do our utmost to prepare citizens for heaven.

I certainly think its very important that writers as citizens - not necessarily as writers, but just as ordinary citizens - should talk about things that matter to them.

We need to tell young people that America was built by men and women of all colors and that the future of this country is dependent on the participation of all of our citizens.

Women are prevented by the threat and reality of male violence from entering public space on equal terms with male citizens.

I think it is right for Canadians to be asked to show their faces when they're taking the oath. On revocation of citizenship, we do not let people who have criminal records, including convictions for terrorism, become either permanent residents or citizens. I think there is a limit beyond which someone has really cashed in their chips in terms of their allegiance to Canada.

Romania will always defend the Roma's right to move freely in Europe. They are European citizens and as long as there is no evidence they broke the law they should enjoy the same rights of any European citizen.

Now it is firstly a matter of a clean divorce, because citizens and companies need legal certainty. Can there be a new partnership with the United Kingdom one day? All 27 Member States would have to agree to that. And the United Kingdom would first have to reflect on what it wants itself.

The labor unions shall have a square deal, and the corporations shall have a square deal, and in addition, all private citizens shall have a square deal.

I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover: If there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God, you just rejected him from your city.

Not well-built walls, but brave citizens are the bulwark of the city.

When a nominee for the Supreme Court, one of only nine lifetime appointments, makes an overtly brazen racist comment about tens of millions of American citizens, we don't need lectures. What we need to do is to confront her with what she said and what it says about her.

Europe is often held up as a cautionary tale, a demonstration that if you try to make the economy less brutal, to take better care of your fellow citizens when they're down on their luck, you end up killing economic progress. But what European experience actually demonstrates is the opposite: social justice and progress can go hand in hand.

We develop the kind of citizens we deserve.

Education as a democratic project always presupposes a vision of the future in its introduction to, preparation for, and legitimation of particular forms of social life. It is utopian in its goal of expanding and deepening the ideological and material conditions that make a democracy possible. As a moral and political practice, education produces the modes of literacy, critique, sense of social responsibility, and civic courage necessary to imbue young people with the knowledge and skills needed to enable them to be engaged critical citizens willing to fight for a sustainable and just society.

As citizens, we all have an obligation to intervene and become involved - it's the citizen who changes things.

If freedom's best friends cannot unify around a realistic, actionable program of fundamental change, one that attracts and persuades a broad majority of our fellow citizens, big change will not come

A state of war is not a blank check... when it comes to the rights of the Nation's citizens.

A society is judged by the way it cares for its most vulnerable citizens. As an American, I am ashamed that we have turned out backs on millions of our children. I want to do my part to rectify this terrible situation.

Islam is a vibrant faith. Millions of our fellow citizens are Muslim. We respect the faith. We honor its traditions. Our enemy does not. Our enemy doesn't follow the great traditions of Islam. They've hijacked a great religion.

The class of citizens who provide at once their own food and their own raiment, may be viewed as the most truly independent and happy.

It will be the duty of the Executive, with sufficient appropriations for the purpose, to prosecute unsparingly all who have been engaged in depriving citizens of the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution.

As young Americans, you have an important responsibility, which is to become good citizens.

The euro will raise the citizens' awareness of their belonging to one Europe more than any other integration step to date.

The problem is not that public schools do not work well, but rather that they do. The first goal and primary function of schools is not to educate good people, but good citizens. It is the function which we normally label state indoctrination.

I think we fall in love and become adults and become citizens in a way by writing stories about ourselves.

Those gentlemen, who will be elected senators, will fix themselves in the federal town, and become citizens of that town more than of your state.

We all have an obligation as citizens of this earth to leave the world a healthier, cleaner, and better place for our children and future generations.

Of course we all know people who aren't cut out for college, but I know it's a mistake to think of education only as a route to a better career. Reading books, studying history - all these things contribute to making us better citizens, too.

If citizens followed their leaders' example throughout history, the human race would have died out centuries ago.

All the rights secured to the citizens under the Constitution are worth nothing, and a mere bubble, except guaranteed to them by an independent and virtuous Judiciary.

Manchester is a city which has witnessed a great many stirring episodes, especially of a political character. Generally speaking, its citizens have been liberal in their sentiments, defenders of free speech and liberty of opinion.

... it is not a crisis of our environs or surroundings; it is a crisis of our lives as individuals, as family members, as community members, and as citizens. We have an 'environmental crisis' because we have consented to an economy in which by eating, drinking, working, resting, traveling, and enjoying ourselves we are destroying the natural, god-given world.

I desire to call attention to the fact that the united, well ordered American home is one of the greatest contributing factors to the preservation of the Constitution of the United States. It has been aptly said that "Out of the homes of America will come the future citizens of America, and only as those homes are what they should be will this nation be what it should be."

It is a hard matter, my fellow citizens, to argue with the belly, since it has no ears.

Whenever citizens are seen routinely as enemies of their own government, writers are rountinely seen to be the most dangerous enemies.

Of all the treasures a state can possess, the human lives of its citizens are for us the most precious.

Civil society rests on moral relationships. They are covenantal rather than contractual. They are brought about not by governments but by us a husbands and wives, parents, friends and citizens, and by the knowledge of what we do and what we are makes a difference to those around us. (...) Renewing society's resources of moral energy is the program, urgent but achievable.