Civic Duty Quotes

To me, history ought to be a source of pleasure. It isn't just part of our civic responsibility. To me, it's an enlargement of the experience of being alive, just the way literature or art or music is.; NEH 2003 Jefferson Lecturer interview profile]

~ David Mccullough

It can be difficult to speak truth to power. Circumstances, however, have made doing so increasingly necessary.

~ Aberjhani

The job facing American voters… in the days and years to come is to determine which hearts, minds and souls command those qualities best suited to unify a country rather than further divide it, to heal the wounds of a nation as opposed to aggravate its injuries, and to secure for the next generation a legacy of choices based on informed awareness rather than one of reactions based on unknowing fear.

~ Aberjhani

Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

~ John F. Kennedy

Where are our Men of abilities? Why do they not come forth to save their Country?

~ George Washington

Democracy is not simply a license to indulge individual whims and proclivities. It is also holding oneself accountable to some reasonable degree for the conditions of peace and chaos that impact the lives of those who inhabit one’s beloved extended community.

~ Aberjhani

To me, history ought to be a source of pleasure. It isn't just part of our civic responsibility. To me, it's an enlargement of the experience of being alive, just the way literature or art or musi

~ David Mccullough

Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude - not a punishment for making money.

~ Alain De Botton

Discourse and critical thinking are essential tools when it comes to securing progress in a democratic society. But in the end, unity and engaged participation are what make it happen.

~ Aberjhani

The people had once created the city. The city now created the people, or, more exactly, the people of Venice now identified themselves more in terms of the city. The private had become public.

~ Peter Ackroyd

A vote is like a rifle: its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.

~ Theodore Roosevelt

Civic duty? Perhaps it would be a little naive to try to coerce me into voting. I assure you my basic standards of healthy living are very different from yours, which is the reason I do not vote. You should note that, as nonsensical a scenario, if forced to choose I would most definitely rather live in a failing, Christ-honoring, God-fearing nation than a flourishing one that mocks said Creator. Beware of my personal ambitions.

~ Criss Jami

The generation of American men who fought the Second World War were too struck by the scale of the effort – and the stakes of the effort – to see the war as a stage for their own personal heroism. Most men seem to have taken the lesson that there's enough honor in doing a hard job when you have to.

~ Jeremy Rabkin

It was no accident that the beau ideal of his (John Adams') political philosophy was balance, since he projected onto the world the conflicting passions he felt inside himself and regarded government as the balancing mechanism that prevented those factions and furies from spending out of control.

~ Joseph J. Ellis

Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.

~ Theodore Roosevelt

Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official.

~ Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt's father wrote him, I fear for your future. We cannot stand so corrupt a government for any great length of time.

~ Doris Kearns Goodwin