Citizenship Quotes - Page 7

• What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task. This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

  Barack Obama

  Character, Responsibility, Giving

  First Presidential Inaugural Address, Delivered 20 January 2009

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• The corporations are powerful only because we have allowed them to be. In theory, it is we, not they, who mandate the state. But we have neglected our duty of citizenship, and they have taken advantage of our neglect to seize the reins of government.

  George Monbiot

  Powerful, Taken, Government

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• A system of limitless individual choices, with respect to communications, is not necessarily in the interest of citizenship and self-government.

  Cass Sunstein

  Communication, Government, Self

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• You are a citizen, and citizenship carries responsibilities.

  Paul Collier

  Responsibility, Citizens, Carrie

  Paul Collier (2007). “The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It”, p.176, Oxford University Press

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• The long-term goal of Christians in politics should be to gain exclusive control over the franchise. Those who refuse to submit publicly to the eternal sanctions of God by submitting to His Church's public marks of the covenant-baptism and holy communion-must be denied citizenship.

  Gary North

  Christian, Goal, Long

  Gary North (1989). “Political polytheism: the myth of pluralism”, Inst for Christian Economics

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• When carrying a concealed weapon for self-defense
  is understood NOT as a failure of civil society,
  to be mourned,
  but as an act of citizenship,
  to be vaunted,
  there is little civilian life left.

  Jill Lepore

  Self, Defense, Littles

  "Battleground America". www.newyorker.com. April 23, 2012.

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• The problem is that we are living now with the consequences of the others people mistake. It would be nice to make our own and learn from them. That is the art of democracy. That is the art of citizenship.

  Raj Patel

  Art, Mistake, Nice

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• To encounter Christ is to touch reality and experience transcendence. He gives us a sense of self-worth or personal significance, because He assures us of God's love for us. He sets us free from guilt because He died for us and from paralyzing fear because He reigns. He gives meaning to marriage and home, work and leisure, personhood and citizenship.

  John Stott

  Home, Self Worth, Reality

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• It has not been my fortune to know very much of Freemasonry, but I have had the great fortune to know many Freemasons and have been able in that way to judge the tree by its fruit. I know of your high ideals. I have seen that you hold your meetings in the presence of the open Bible, and I know that men who observe that formality have high sentiments of citizenship, of worth, and character. That is the strength of our Commonwealth and nation.

  Calvin Coolidge

  Character, Men, Judging

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• Honest people know that the road to success and virtue always involves shared sacrifice, hard work, and gratification postponed. Telling people otherwise isn't leadership, it is pandering.

  Eric Liu

  Hard Work, Sacrifice, People

  Eric Liu, Nick Hanauer (2012). “The True Patriot”, p.89, Sasquatch Books

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• It must be a good thing to die conscious of having performed some real good, and to know that by this work one will live, at least in the memory of some, and will have left a good example to those that come after. A work that is good-it may not be eternal, but the thought expressed in it is, and the work itself will certainly remain in existence for a long, long time; and if afterwards others arise, they can do no better than follow in the footsteps of such predecessors and do their work in the same way.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Memories, Real, Long

  Vincent van Gogh, Vincent Willem Gogh (1927). “The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh to His Brother, 1872-1886: With a Memoir by His Sister-in-law, J. Van Gogh-Bonger ...”

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• When one comes to think of it, there are no such things as divine, immutable, or inalienable rights. Rights are things we get when we are strong enough to make good our claim on them.

  Helen Keller

  Strong, Thinking, Rights

  Helen Keller (1967). “Helen Keller, her Socialist years: writings and speeches”

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• At this auspicious period, the United States came into existence as a Nation; and if their Citizens should not be completely free and happy, the fault will be entirely their own.

  George Washington

  United States, Citizens, Faults

  George Washington (1852). “The life of General Washington: first president of the United States”, p.112

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• There is no patent recipe for getting good citizenship. You get it by applying the old, old rules of decent conduct, the rules in accordance with which decent men have had to shape their lives from the beginning .. fundamental precepts, put forth in the Bible and embodied consciously or unconsciously in the code of morals of every great and successful nation from antiquity to modern times.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Successful, Men, Patents

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• At its most basic the democratic contract is a simple one: the right to vote comes with a responsibility to society, through tax payments and citizenship.

  Lucy Powell

  Responsibility, Simple, Vote

  "Giving the vote to 16-year-olds is a question of democracy" by Lucy Powell, www.theguardian.com. August 1, 2008.

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• Can we drop a little bit of the pious baloney? The fact is, you ran in '94 and lost. That's why you weren't serving in the Senate with Rick Santorum. The fact is, you had a very bad re-election rating, you dropped out of office, you had been out of state for something like 200 days preparing to run for president. You didn't have this interlude of citizenship while you thought about what you do. You were running for president while you were governor.

  Newt Gingrich

  Running, Office, President

  Newt Gingrich at GOP Primary debate at Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord, New Hampshire, www.washingtonpost.com. January 8, 2012.

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• Industrial capitalism brought representative democracy, but with a weak public mandate and inert citizenry. The digital age offers a new democracy based on public deliberation and active citizenship.

  Don Tapscott

  Democracy, Age, Digital

  "Don Tapscott: Transforming Capitalism Won’t Happen Without Leadership". www.thestar.com. May 17, 2013.

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• As citizen-activists the world over merge, they can become an irresistible force to create peace and protect the planet. From here will come a new movement to abolish nuclear weapons and all weapons of mass destruction. From here will come the demand for sustainable communities, for new systems of energy, transportation and commerce. From here comes the future rushing in on us. How does one acquire the capacity for active citizenship? The opportunities exist every day...Active citizenship begins with an envisioning of the desired outcome and a conscious application of spiritual principles.

  Dennis Kucinich

  Spiritual, Opportunity, Rushing

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• What makes America special is that people come here, assimilate and become American with all of the rights and responsibilities citizenship bestows.

  Zoe Lofgren

  Responsibility, Rights, America

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• I think the arts has great potential to create citizens. Citizenship is about the direction your imagination travels. We can't plan or calculate or examine citizenship; it's an imagined thing. Community is an imagined thing. And if your imagination isn't working - and, of course, in oppressed people that's the first thing that goes - you can't imagine anything better. Once you can imagine something different, something better, then you're on your way.

  Lee Maracle

  Art, Thinking, People

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• With the full realization that, in order to earn for ourselves any place in the sun, we must with perseverance and self-discipline work collectively for the full first-class citizenship participation of Minorities everywhere, including ourselves.

  Harry Hay

  Perseverance, Class, Self

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• I am committed to writing appropriate books for the middle grades. This means no bad language, no gratuitous or explicit violence, and no sexual content beyond what you might find in a PG-rated movie – expressions of who likes whom, holding hands, and perhaps the occasional kiss. The idea that we should treat sexual orientation itself as an adults-only topic, however, is absurd. Non-heterosexual children exist. To pretend they do not, to fail to recognize that they have needs for support and validation like any child, would be bad teaching, bad writing, and bad citizenship.

  Rick Riordan

  Children, Book, Teaching

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• I am the first prime minister of this country of neither English nor French origin. So I determined to bring about a Canadian citizenship that knew no hyphenated consideration....I'm very happy to be able to say that in the House of Commons today in my party we have members of Italian, Dutch, German, Scandinavian, Chinese and Ukrainian origin and they are all Canadians.

  John Diefenbaker

  Country, Party, Italian

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• The new culture war is about national identity rather than religion and 'transcendent authority.' It focuses on which groups the United States will formally admit to residence and citizenship. It asks the same question as the old culture war: 'Who are we?' But the earlier query was primarily about how we define ourselves morally. The new question is about how we define ourselves ethnically, racially and linguistically. It is, in truth, one of the oldest questions in our history, going back to our earliest immigration battles of the 1840s and 1850s.

  E. J. Dionne

  War, Battle, Identity

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• In a composite Nation like ours, made up of almost every variety of the human family, there should be, as before the Law, no rich, no poor, no high, no low, no black, no white, but one country, one citizenship equal rights and a common destiny for all.
  A government that cannot or does not protect the humblest citizen in his right to life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness, should be reformed or overthrown, without delay.

  Frederick Douglass

  Country, Pursuit Of Happiness, Equality

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