Quotes on Citizens

What we have ignored is what citizens can do and the importance of real involvement of the people involved - versus just having somebody in Washington make a rule.

Thanks to aid, a distressing number of African leaders care little about what their citizens want or need - after all it's the reverse of the Boston tea-party - no representation without taxation.

Shouldn't one of the goals of prison be getting as many of the inmates as possible back out into the world to be responsible citizens? Aren't we just wasting generations of human potential by keeping over two million people behind bars?

So we've never had a President of the United States ask anything of black citizens. And I think the reason for that is they've all felt that if they presume to do that, that they would be stigmatized as racist.

It's no small thing for the citizens of your state to say we want you to represent us at the highest level of our government.

Education promotes equality and lifts people out of poverty. It teaches children how to become good citizens. Education is not just for a privileged few, it is for everyone. It is a fundamental human right.

Crime takes place in every country. But it becomes abuse when the state is unwilling and unable to protect the life and honour of its citizens.

Democracy does not require perfect equality, but it does require that citizens share a common life. What matters is that people of different backgrounds and social positions encounter one another, and bump up against one another, in the course of ordinary life.

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

I think that literature has the important effect of creating free, independent, critical citizens who cannot be manipulated.

For too long, history has imposed a binary condition on its black citizens: either nameless or renowned, menial or exceptional, passive recipients of the forces of history or superheroes who acquire mythic status not just because of their deeds but because of their scarcity.

Certainly, by providing individuals coming out of institutions with ways to become productive citizens, we reduce recidivism. What that means is we reduce crime. There are fewer victims when individuals have options - when they have job skills, when they have life skills, we break the cycle of children following their parents into institutions.

If children do not understand the Constitution, they cannot understand how our government functions, or what their rights and responsibilities are as citizens of the United States.

But in view of the constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here.

The Arab world needs a modern version of the old transnational media so citizens can be informed about global events. More important, we need to provide a platform for Arab voices.

It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.

The most important office, and the one which all of us can and should fill, is that of private citizen.

If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. -Speech at Clinton, Illinois, September 8, 1854.

What a country needs to do is be fair to all its citizens - whether people are of a different ethnicity or gender.

We are persuaded that good Christians will always be good citizens, and that where righteousness prevails among individuals the Nation will be great and happy. Thus while just government protects all in their religious rights, true religion affords to government it's surest support.

The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.