Citizenship Quotes

It’s not unpatriotic to denounce an injustice committed on our behalf, perhaps it’s the most patriotic thing we can do.

~ E.a. Bucchianeri

A man should construct meaningful ideas at his own will if he wants to take citizenship responsibilty by helping others pursue their happiness.

~ Saaif Alam

When justice is prioritized by any leader at any level then to give justice to the citizenry will always be at the back of the mind of such a leader.

~ Sunday Adelaja

If there is any society where the leaders lack the knowledge and the importance of justice, then oppression will be a common neighbor of the citizens.

~ Sunday Adelaja

Until there is equal and fair portion of opportunities apportioned for every citizen, the power structure may need to be restructured.

~ Sunday Adelaja

Everything can be explained to the people, on the single condition that you want them to understand.

~ Frantz Fanon

It is particularly important to note that, in a democracy, education has never been concerned only with supplying the needs of the economy or ensuring effective socialisation; it also has strong traditions of preparing for citizenship, extending possibilities for learning and promoting social progress.

~ Gaby Weiner

Reject anything advice, which does not lead to your personal progress.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The United States, almost alone today, offers the liberties and the privileges and the tools of freedom. In this land the citizens are still invited to write their plays and books, to paint their pictures, to meet for discussion, to dissent as well as to agree, to mount soapboxes in the public square, to enjoy education in all subjects without censorship, to hold court and judge one another, to compose music, to talk politics with their neighbors without wondering whether the secret police are listening, to exchange ideas as well as goods, to kid the government when it needs kidding, and to read real news of real events instead of phony news manufactured by a paid agent of the state. This is a fact and should give every person pause.

~ E.b. White

If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams.

~ Yann Martel

Change can only take place if we desire the change.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

If a policy is wrongheaded feckless and corrupt I take it personally and consider it a moral obligation to sound off and not shut up until it's fixed.

~ David H. Hackworth

Achievement was worthy of praise and honor, but excessive achievement was pernicious and a threat to the state. However great a citizen might become, however great he might wish to become, the truest greatness of all still belonged to the Roman Republic itself

~ Tom Holland

A champion, he said, wins a World Series or an Olympic and is hoisted on the shoulders of teammates and fans. A hero carries the people on his shoulders. Champions live for the moment- heroes, like Jackie Robinson, transcend time.

~ Sharon Robinson

It is a duty of every citizen to pray for those who are authority and the nation, so that each one of us may live a peaceful and quiet lives in sacredness.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Every nation must have prayerful men and women to intercede for the country’s well-being.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

An act of charity by the citizens questions the worthiness of the government.

~ Amit Kalantri

The work of an intellectual is not to form the political will of others; it is, through the analyses he does in his own domains, to bring assumptions and things taken for granted again into question, to shake habits, ways of acting and thinking, to dispel the familiarity of the accepted, to take the measure of rules and institutions and, starting from that re-problemitisation (where he plays his specific role as intellectual) to take part in the formation of a political will (where he has his role to play as citizen).

~ Michel Foucault

The American flag doesn't give her glory on a peaceful, calm day. It's when the winds pick up and become boisterous, do we see her strength. When she unfolds her hand, and shows her frayed fingers, where we see the stretch of red-blood lines of man that fought for this land. The purity of white stripes that strips our sins, and the stars of Abraham's covenant, broad in a midnight blue sky. The rights our forefathers established. As it waves high in the currents of freedom, where the Torch of Liberty shines over the sea, does she give meaning to unity. When we strive as one nation, or when it drops half-mast, to a fallen soldier.

~ Anthony Liccione

Practical utility, however, is not the ultimate purpose of a liberal arts education. Its ultimate purpose is to help you learn to reflect in the widest and deepest sense, beyond the requirements of work and career: for the sake of citizenship, for the sake of living well with others, above all, for the sake of building a self that is strong and creative and free.

~ William Deresiewicz

It is a mistake to tell students that their classroom is a democracy- it cannot and never will be. But children need to learn how to participate in a community and to prepare themselves for democratic citizenship.

~ Karen Bohlin

Live for your country, die to yourself; live for yourself, die to your country.

~ Anthony Liccione

Your patriotism is not measured by what your country can do for you. It's all about what you can do for your country for your own benefit and for the benefit of unborn generations!

~ Israelmore Ayivor

It's a civic virtue to be exposed to things that appear to be outside your interest. In a complex world, almost everything affects you – that closes the loop on pecuniary self-interest. Customers are always right, but people aren't.

~ Clive Thompson

We'd do well to remember that at the end of the day, the law doesn't defend us; we defend the law. And when it becomes contrary to our morals, we have both the right and the responsibility to rebalance it toward just ends.

~ Edward Snowden

In his book The Soul of Black Folks, W.E.B. DuBois writes about always feeling his twoness-- an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; to warring ideals in one dark body.

~ Ron Suskind

We are forever lured by the sirens of the dogmatic mind, with its haughty complacency, which determines that one´s relationship to others is only meaningful when one tries to convince them of one´s single truth. In such a spiritual and intellectual climate, holding a dialogue consists of speaking, but never of listening - the other is the privileged scope of my proselytism. My truth thus becomes a blind and blinding passion - it imprisons me, even as it was supposed to liberate me; it has become a source of alienation.

~ Tariq Ramadan

Participation in the collective life of the polis both restrains the extraordinary individual and enlarges the ordinary individual, allowing him to participate in the extraordinary. An individual can achieve participatory excellence via the accomplishments of the polis and need not always be caught up in the agnostic struggle to outdo his peers.

~ Rebecca Goldstein

Governments represent their citizens in the same way as parasites represent their hosts.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

It may sound reactionary, I know. But we can all feel it. We've changed the way we think of ourselves as citizens. We don't think of ourselves as citizens in the old sense of being small parts of something larger and infinitely more important to which we have serious responsibilities. We do still think of ourselves as citizens in the sense of being beneficiaries--we're actually conscious of our rights as American citizens and the nation's responsibilities to us and ensuring we get our share of the American pie. We think of ourselves now as eaters of the pie instead of makers of the pie. So who makes the pie?...Something has happened where we've decided on a personal level that it's all right to abdicate our individual responsibility to the common good and let government worry about the common good while we all go about our individual self-interested business and struggle to gratify our various appetites.

~ David Foster Wallace

This revolutionary idea of Western citizenship—replete with ever more rights and responsibilities—would provide superb manpower for growing legions and a legal framework that would guarantee that the men who fought felt that they themselves in a formal and contractual sense had ratified the conditions of their own battle service. The ancient Western world would soon come to define itself by culture rather than by race, skin color, or language. That idea alone would eventually bring enormous advantages to its armies on the battlefield. (p. 122)

~ Victor Davis Hanson

The rate spread of EBOLA VIRUS in West Africa, is big tragedy. It is a fatal disease in the history of the world. Intensive education (formal and informal approaches) of the citizens of African can help prevent the spread. International cooperation is urgently needed to combat the EBOLA virus.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Darwin's theory was received in Russia with profound sympathy. While in Western Europe it met firmly established old traditions which it had first to overcome, in Russia its appearance coincided with the awakening of our society after the Crimean War and here it immediately received the status of full citizenship and ever since has enjoyed widespread popularity.

~ Vladimir Onufrievich Kovalevskiĭ

Application does not guarantee citizenship; it is granted by the government. In Heaven, citizenship is granted only by Jesus Christ the ultimate judge. Matthew 7:15-23

~ Felix Wantang

In a republican nation, whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance

~ Thomas Jefferson

Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man’s nose begins.

~ Zechariah Chafee Jr.

I didn't flee a dictator or swim an ocean to be an American like some do. I just thought long and hard about it.

~ Craig Ferguson

[I]t is the greatest absurdity to suppose it in the power of one, or of any number of men, at the entering into society to renounce their essential natural rights, or the means of preserving those rights, when the grand end of civil government, from the very nature of its institution, is for the support, protection, and defence of those very rights; the principal of which, as is before observed, are life, liberty, and property. If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up an essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right of freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave.

~ Samuel Adams

Stain not the glory of your worthy ancestors, but like them resolve never to part with your birthright; be wise in your deliberations, and determined in your exertions for the preservation of your liberties. Fllow not the dictates of passion, but enlist yourselves under the sacred banner of reason; use every method in your power to secure your rights.

~ Joseph Warren

And it is undeniably true that the greatest and most important right of a British subject is that he shall be governed by no laws but those to which he, either in person or by his representatives, hath given his consent; and this, I will venture to assert, is the great basis of British freedom; it is interwoven with the Constitution, and whenever this is lost, the Constitution must be destroyed.

~ Joseph Warren