Citizens Quotes - Page 12

• The education that we have so far succeeded in giving to the bulk of our citizens has produced a generation of mental slatterns.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Giving, Generations

  Dorothy L. Sayers (2010). “Mind of the Maker”, p.16, Bloomsbury Publishing

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• We all know that election reform takes time. That's because those who have benefited from the system are the ones who fight hardest to preserve it. So if we're going to succeed, we need an independent coalition of citizens who believe in reform, who believe that our election laws should treat every voter equally, who believe that low levels of competition and participation are not healthy for democracy. The Independence Party is helping to build that coalition and I am happy to join you in doing so.

  Michael Bloomberg

  Party, Believe, Independent

  "CBS Evening News", "Campaign '08" segment,, June 20, 2007.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The state accumulates moral power only through the spiritual activity of their citizens.

  Mary Parker Follett

  Spiritual, Moral, States

  Mary Parker Follett (1918). “The New State: Group Organization the Solution of Popular Government”, p.334, Penn State Press

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The business society is interested in training its citizens to make money, and, in this objective, it is often successful. Many of them do make money, and the ones who do not obligingly regard themselves as failures who have wasted the precious gift of life.

  Margaret Halsey

  Business, Successful, Training

  8 Copy quote

• The position of children as a group, in a commercial society, is not wholly advantageous. A commercial society urges its citizens to be responsible for things, but not for people. It is the unquestioned assumption of a mercantile culture that things need and deserve attention, but that people can take care of themselves.

  Margaret Halsey

  Children, Business, People

  Margaret Halsey (1952). “The Folks at Home”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Public opinion, though slow as lava, in the end forces governments towards more sanity, more justice. My heroes and heroines are all private citizens.

  Martha Gellhorn

  Hero, Government, Justice

  Martha Gellhorn (2015). “The View From The Ground”, p.400, Granta Books

  44 Copy quote

  Show source

• The real transgression occurs when religion wants government to tell citizens how to live uniquely personal parts of their lives. The failure of Prohibition proves the futility of such an attempt when a majority or even a substantial minority happens to disagree. Some questions may be inherently individual ones, or people may be sharply divided about whether they are. In such cases, like Prohibition and abortion, the proper role of religion is to appeal to the conscience of the individual, not the coercive power of the state.

  Edward Kennedy

  Real, Government, People

  4 Copy quote

• Politicians aren't any more wicked than other citizens but the situation in which they are placed warps their judgment.

  Helen Gahagan Douglas

  Wicked, Judgment, Politician

  16 Copy quote

• I am for police function that protects citizens of this great Nation, not a police function that is used to terrorize them.

  Dennis Kucinich

  Police, Used, Function

  8 Copy quote

• Stages of life are artifacts. Adolescence is a useful contrivance, midlife is a moving target, senior citizens are an interest group, and tweenhood is just plain made up.

  Jill Lepore

  Senior, Moving, Age

  "Baby Talk" by Jill Lepore, www.newyorker.com. June 29, 2009.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• America has a history of political isolation and economic self-sufficiency; its citizens have tended to regard the rest of the world as a disaster area from which lucky or pushy people emigrate to the Promised Land.

  Alison Lurie

  Self, Land, America

  4 Copy quote

• Free from public debt, at peace with all the world, and with no complicated interests to consult in our intercourse with foreign powers, the present may be hailed as the epoch in our history the most favorable for the settlement of those principles in our domestic policy which shall be best calculated to give stability to our Republic and secure the blessings of freedom to our citizens.

  Andrew Jackson

  Blessing, Giving, Principles

  Andrew Jackson (1837). “Messages ...: With a Short Sketch of His Life”, p.289

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• You may consider me presumptuous, gentlemen, but I claim to be a citizen of the United States, with all the qualifications of a voter. I can read the Constitution, I am possessed of two hundred and fifty dollars, and the last time I looked in the old family Bible I found I was over twenty-one years of age.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Years, Two, Gentleman

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Susan Brownell Anthony (1872). “Memorial of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Elizabeth L. Bladen, Olympia Brown, Susan B. Anthony, and Josephine L. Griffing, to the Congress of the United States, and the Arguments Thereon Before the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. Senate”, p.19

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The mere fact of leaving ultimate social control in the hands of the people has not guaranteed that men will be able to conduct their lives as free men. Those societies where men know they are free are often democracies, but sometimes they have strong chiefs and kings.they have, however, one common characteristic: they are all alike in making certain freedoms common to all citizens, and inalienable.

  Ruth Benedict

  Strong, Kings, Freedom

  Ruth Benedict (2011). “An Anthropologist at Work”, p.392, Transaction Publishers

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Literature is the one place in any society where, within the secrecy of our own heads, we can hear voices talking about everythingin every possible way. The reason for ensuring that that privileged arena is preserved is not that writers want the absolute freedom to say and do whatever they please. It is that we, all of us, readers and writers and citizens and generals and goodmen, need that little, unimportant-looking room. We do not need to call it sacred, but we do need to remember that it is necessary.

  Salman Rushdie

  Voice, Talking, Want

  "Is Nothing Sacred?" (1990)

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The universe has no prince or king that it [Rome] would consider equal to its humblest citizen.

  Pierre Corneille

  Kings, Rome, Democracy

  5 Copy quote

• It gives me the greatest pleasure to say, as I do from the bottom of my heart, that never in the history of the country, in any crisis and under any conditions, have our Jewish fellow citizens failed to live up to the highest standards of citizenship and patriotism.

  William Howard Taft

  Country, Heart, Giving

  William Howard Taft, David Henry Burton (2004). “The Collected Works of William Howard Taft: Presidential addresses and state papers”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every U.S. citizen owes allegiance to our nation. Some Americans consider that anything less than high treason is allegiance.

  Cullen Hightower

  America, Allegiance, Treason

  5 Copy quote

• The imposition of taxes has its limits. There is a maximum which cannot be transcended. Suppose the citizen to be taxed by the general government to the utmost extent of his ability, or a thing as much as it can possibly bear, and the state imposes a tax at the same time, which authority is to take it?

  Henry Clay

  Government, Limits, Bears

  Henry Clay (2015). “The Papers of Henry Clay: Presidential Candidate, 1821-1824”, p.587, University Press of Kentucky

  27 Copy quote

  Show source

• There clearly are cases where evil people exist, but you don't have to violate the privacy of every single citizen of America to find them.

  Eric Schmidt

  Leadership, America, Evil People

  "Google: NSA spying on data centers is ‘outrageous’". www.foxnews.com. November 4, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• [Travel seems] not just a way of having a good time, but something that every self-respecting citizen ought to undertake, like a high-fiber diet, say, or a deodorant.

  Jan Morris

  Self, Deodorant, Way

  7 Copy quote

• To speak impartially, both sayings are very true: that man to man is a kind of God; and that man to man is an arrant wolf. The first is true, if we compare citizens amongst themselves; and the second, if we compare cities.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Men, Cities, Firsts

  Thomas Hobbes, Bernard Gert (1972). “Man and Citizen: De Homine and De Cive”, p.11, Hackett Publishing

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Science for the Citizen is ... also written for the large and growing number of adolescents, who realize that they will be the first victims of the new destructive powers of science misapplied.

  Lancelot Hogben

  Numbers, Growing, Firsts

  6 Copy quote

• Sophia Loren is not a citizen.

  Phil Gramm

  Politics, Sexism, Sophia

  1995 On being asked if he would choose a woman as a running mate. In Newsweek,13 Mar.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Plato--who may have understood better what forms the mind of man than do some of our contemporaries who want their children exposed only to "real" people and everyday events--knew what intellectual experience made for true humanity. He suggested that the future citizens of his ideal republic begin their literary education with the telling of myths, rather than with mere facts or so-called rational teachings.

  Bruno Bettelheim

  Education, Plato, Children

  Bruno Bettelheim (1976). “The uses of enchantment: the meaning and importance of fairy tales”, Knopf

  28 Copy quote

  Show source