Quotes About Citizens

A democratic public forms when citizens gather together to deliberate and make public judgments about local and national issues that affect their lives. By associating together for public discussion, citizens learn the skills necessary for the health of a democratic public; listening persuading, arguing, compromising, and seeking common ground. When these skills are nurtured within the institutions of a democratic public, citizens educate themselves in order to make informed political decisions.

Things have changed in Latin America now. We mostly have democratic governments in Latin America, so the position of the writer has changed. It is not as Neruda used to say, that a Latin American writer walks around with the body of his people on his back. Now, we have citizens, we have public means of expression, political parties, congress, unions. So, the writer's position has changed, we now consider ourselves to be citizens - not spokespeople for everybody - but citizens that participate in the political and social process of the country.

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.

It can sound trite if you just say citizens need to be educated for democracy to work, but for him it wasn't trite. It was really this strenuous challenge to citizens to use their moments of leisure, which he defined as time away from work, to collect the facts that were necessary for full democratic participation.

I believe everybody in the world should have guns. Citizens should have bazookas and rocket launchers too. I believe that all citizens should have their weapons of choice. However, I also believe that only I should have the ammunition. Because frankly, I wouldn't trust the rest of the goobers with anything more dangerous than string.

It's not as though there aren't many, many art works and many other cultures, but there was something special about the civic nature of the Greek theater. All the citizens stopped working. They came into these theaters. It wasn't like a Broadway theater where you sit in the dark and you expect to be passively entertained. You're in this theater, amphitheater, in bright sunlight looking at your fellow citizens, recognizing their faces, and thinking with them about the future of your city. I think very few cultures have had a theatrical tradition that is quite so civic.

A majority of American citizens are now becoming skeptical of the claim that our carbon footprints, resulting from our use of fossil fuels, are going to lead to climatic calamities. But governments are not yet listening to the citizens.

[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.

With an orchestra you are building citizens, better citizens for the community.

Jan Bhagidari is the biggest asset of a democracy. We are increasing it through MyGov, letters from citizens, Mann Ki Baat and other initiatives.

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

There is as much difference between a collection of mentally free citizens and a community molded by modern methods of propaganda as there is between a heap of raw materials and a battleship.

If terror groups are to be defeated, it is national governments that will have to do so. In nations like India, governments will have to call on the patriotism of citizens to fight the terrorists. In a nation like Pakistan, the government will have to be persuaded to deal with those in their midst who are complicit.

I think in short order all of us need to act like we are citizens with not only rights, but also duties.

Government spending cannot create additional jobs. If the government provides the funds required by taxing the citizens or by borrowing from the public, it abolishes on the one hand as many jobs as it creates on the other.

A timeline for bringing U.S. troops home that is negotiated with the Iraqi government would also boost the Iraqi government's legitimacy and claim to self-rule, and force the Iraqi government to take responsibility for itself and its citizens.

If you could meet your grandkids as elderly citizens in the year 2100 … you would view them as being, basically, Greek gods… that's where we're headed.

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.

On the whole it is the rights and freedoms of all citizens that are crucial in Saudi Arabia and from those the rights of women will emanate.

A man of true honor protects the unwritten word which binds his conscience more scrupulously, if possible, than he does the bond a breach of which subjects him to legal liabilities, and the United States, in aiming to maintain itself as one of the most enlightened nations, would do its citizens gross injustice if it applied to its international relations any other than a high standard of honor and morality.

Peace is nothing more than the regulation of the psycho-political economy of awe and reverential fear, of using the threat of terror in order to bind citizens to the circuit of their subjection.

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.

Among the liberties of citizens that are guaranteed are ... the right to believe what one chooses, the right to differ from his neighbor, the right to pick and choose the political philosophy he likes best, the right to associate with whomever he chooses, the right to join groups he prefers.

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

First of all I would make about 80% of the people law-abiding citizens again. The policy which is carried out now makes every entrepreneur and businessman a thief against his own will.

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

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.

Democracy is not just voting for your leaders; it's really premised upon ordinary citizens understanding the issues.

Obamacare is the nation's biggest job killer and stands in the way of our country's economic growth and prosperity. It should be defunded and repealed. President Obama should hear the pleas from the untold number of Americans who are losing their jobs, wages, and healthcare plans, and Congress should act immediately to stop Obamacare from inflicting any more damage on the country on our hard-working citizens.

There is no alternative. A Democrat is a Republican is a big businessman, and we're all consumers instead of citizens. It just manifests in the culture, in the music, in the art. I feel a little panicky about it.

The public citizenship oath done in a court in front of a judge and one's fellow citizens should be done publicly.

I prefer to concentrate on my task of leading Europe to the success that our citizens expect. We have to look forwards now because what is at stake is what makes Europe Europe.

Immigration reform should mean something else entirely. It should mean improvements to our laws and policies to make life better for American citizens.

Imagine filling a college with the first 1,000 students to get perfect SATs. Whatever the racial composition of that class would be, the notion seems absurd because we know that college in America is supposed to be about creating citizens and leaders in a diverse nation.

Too many so-called historians are really 'hysterians'; their thinking is more visceral than cerebral. When their duties as citizens clash with their responsibilities as scholars, Clio frequently takes a back seat.

I would never want to pass a law limiting freedom of speech, but that doesn't mean we have to condone statements that undermine basic national unity and respect. Imagine being asked to defend a country where some citizens say the man in the White House isn't their president. Or a major presidential contender accuses the commander in chief of not even being a U.S. citizen. Those kinds of statements erode trust in our democracy, and it's up to both parties to publicly reject them. We have to restore confidence that we are a nation that loves and believes in itself.

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.

Be true. Be beautiful. Be free. In the midst of segregation and racism Mamma raised us to be independent and free. We saw ourselves as citizens of the world, not of a block.

The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.

Giving people what they want reduces us to consumers instead of treating us like citizens, consumers who are on the prowl for the predictable and comfortable. What we want winds up being suspiciously like what we've already got, more of the same-the cultural equivalent of a warm bath.

People don't do good work when they feel like losers and are second class citizens within their own company.

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

What, after all, was the point of civilisation if not the well-being of citizens?

I stand here struggling for the rights of my people to be full citizens in this country. They are not-in Mississippi. They are not-in Montgomery. That is why I am here today. . . . You want to shut up every colored person who wants to fight for the rights of his people!.

My assessment of Julian Assange is a professional one, really, of what he's managed to achieve, and the idea that he came up with, which set the world alight and continues to inspire others like Snowden [NSA leaker Edward Snowden], about the secret goings-on that are done in our name with our tax dollars on behalf of big business or politics. He launched the revolutionary idea that citizens can start to claim back a paradigm for questioning power structures and those in authority through an anonymous, whistle-blowing website.

... 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.

The singularity of Islam is its universality. As American citizens and as Muslims, you need to show there is something specific, namely our moral singularity. We believe there is one God and this one God is pushing us to reach universal values by liberating ourselves from our ego and by serving humanity. We must be involved in this by all means necessary, in a nonviolent way, through the legal, media, economic and cultural systems. We cannot achieve this if there is no courage, if we are not ready to sacrifice.

The reality is that baby boomers are turning senior citizens and not only is it inhumane, but the system will go broke. There needs to be wholesale change.