Citizens Quotes - Page 17

• [The current governing judicial philosophy is:] If you want something passionately enough, it is guaranteed by the Constitution. No need to fiddle around gathering votes from recalcitrant citizens.

  Robert Bork

  Philosophy, Want Something, Gathering

  8 Copy quote

• Yet the civilians have always respected the natural right of a citizen to dispose of his life . . .

  Edward Gibbon

  Natural, Civilians

  Edward Gibbon, Henry Hart Milman, Guizot (M., François), Sir William Smith (1862). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.326

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Citizens, the priority now is to recover trust between the Egyptian - amongst the Egyptians and to have trust and confidence in our economy and international reputation and the fact that the change that we have embarked on will carry on and there's no going back to the old days.

  Hosni Mubarak

  Priorities, Facts, Reputation

  11 Copy quote

• North Korea is a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while starving its citizens.

  George W. Bush

  Mass Destruction, Korea, Weapons

  First (Official) Presidential State of the Union Address, delivered 29 January 2002

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Iran aggressively pursues these weapons and exports terror, while an unelected few repress the Iranian people's hope for freedom. The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade. This is a regime that has already used poison gas to murder thousands of its own citizens - leaving the bodies of mothers huddled over their dead children.

  George W. Bush

  Mother, Children, Iran

  First (Official) Presidential State of the Union Address, delivered 29 January 2002

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When the citizens of a nation will no longer volunteer to defend it, then it is probably not worth saving. No nation has the right to survive with conscript troops, and in the long run, no nation ever has.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Running, Long, Volunteer

  5 Copy quote

• Within the market society each serves all his fellow citizens and each is served by them. It is a system of mutual exchange of services and commodities, a mutual giving, and receiving.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Giving, Receiving, Commodity

  Ludwig Von Mises (1985). “Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War”, Libertarian Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Citizens of liberal welfare states become increasingly narcissistic. The great preoccupations of vast numbers of Brits, Frenchmen, Germans and other Western Europeans are how much vacation time they will have an how early they can retire and be supported by the state.

  Dennis Prager

  Vacation, Numbers, Narcissistic

  Dennis Prager (2012). “Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph”, p.41, Harper Collins

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The bigger the government, the less the citizens do for one another. If the state will take care of me and my neighbors, why should I? This is why Western Europeans, people who have lived in welfare states far longer than Americans have, give less to charity and volunteer less time to others than do Americans of the same socioeconomic status.

  Dennis Prager

  Government, Volunteer, Giving

  Dennis Prager (2012). “Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph”, p.40, Harper Collins

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• If government goes beyond securing liberty and instead violates it through regulation, redistribution, and planning, then citizens are victims of legal plunder.

  Richard Ebeling

  Government, Liberty, Regulation

  6 Copy quote

• When government taxes and regulates, what is seen are the visible effects of government contracts, grants, and subsidies. What is not seen are all of the property, business, and jobs that would have been created if citizens were left with the right to choose.

  John Pugsley

  Jobs, Government, Subsidies

  John Pugsley (2007). “The Chairman's Corner: Essays on Liberty from the Sovereign Individual”, p.204, The Sovereign Society

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The decline and fall of a civilization is barely noticed by most of its citizens.

  James Cook

  Fall, Civilization, Decline

  42 Copy quote

• The Obama administration seems to be following what might be called 'the Detroit pattern increasing taxes, harassing businesses, and pandering to unions. In the short run, it got mayors re-elected. In the long-run, it reduced Detroit from a thriving city to an economic disaster area, whose population was cut in half, as its most productive citizens fled.

  Thomas Sowell

  Running, Cutting, Cities

  4 Copy quote

• Governments steal from citizens through taxes and through the subterfuge of monetizing their own IOUs.

  John Pugsley

  Government, Stealing, Subterfuge

  John Pugsley (2007). “The Chairman's Corner: Essays on Liberty from the Sovereign Individual”, p.166, The Sovereign Society

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Anything that shifts power from the individual judgment of free citizens to government is a bad thing.

  Mark Steyn

  Government, Judgment, Individual

  Mark Steyn (2006). “America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It”, p.187, Regnery Publishing

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• But there is nothing idealized or romantic about the difference between a society whose arrangements roughly serve all its citizens (something otherwise known as social justice) and one whose institutions have been converted into a stupendous fraud. That can be the difference between democracy and plutocracy.

  Bill Moyers

  Differences, Justice, Democracy

  "The Great American Class War" by Bill Moyers, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 12, 2013.

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is always unconscionable for the government to punish people for expressing an idea merely because government officials - or the majority of citizens - decide that those ideas are 'dangerous' or 'wrong.' That is a power nobody ought to possess.

  Glenn Greenwald

  Government, Ideas, People

  4 Copy quote

• By definition, the moment one crosses from center to left, one accepts more government control of people's lives. Therefore, the further left society moves, the more there is government control over its citizens' lives. It is astonishing that this obvious fact is not universally acknowledged and that the Left has somehow successfully portrayed itself as preoccupied with personal liberty.

  Dennis Prager

  Moving, Government, People

  8 Copy quote

• Unchecked, government social programs are a security threat because they weaken the ultimate line of defense: the free-born citizen whose responsibilities are not subcontracted to the government.

  Mark Steyn

  Responsibility, Government, Defense

  Mark Steyn (2006). “America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It”, p.51, Regnery Publishing

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Democracy does not require perfect equality, but it does require that citizens share in a common life.

  Michael Sandel

  Perfect, Democracy, Doe

  Michael J. Sandel (2012). “What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets”, p.225, Macmillan

  28 Copy quote

  Show source

• Citizens as conceived by governments are persons who admire the status quo and are prepared to exert themselves for its preservation. Oddly enough, while all governments aim at producing men of this type to the exclusion of all other types, their heroes in the past are of exactly the sort that they aim at preventing in the present. Americans admire George Washington and Jefferson, but imprison those who share their political opinions.

  Bertrand Russell

  Hero, Men, Past

  Bertrand Russell (2013). “Education and the Social Order”, p.11, Routledge

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The more numerous public instrumentalities become, the more is there generated in citizens the notion that everything is to be done for them, and nothing by them. Every generation is made less familiar with the attainment of desired ends by individual actions or private agencies; until, eventually, governmental agencies come to be thought of as the only available agencies.

  Herbert Spencer

  Agency, Generations, Done

  Herbert Spencer, John Offer (1994). “Spencer: Political Writings”, p.92, Cambridge University Press

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The same government that requires a taxpaying citizen to document every statement on his tax return decrees that questioning a welfare applicant demeans and humiliates him.

  Ronald Reagan

  Government, Return, Welfare

  8 Copy quote

• The essential function of the State is to maintain peace, justice, law, and order, and to protect the individual citizen against aggression, violence, theft, and fraud.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Order, Law, Justice

  Henry Hazlitt (1971). “Man Vs. the Welfare State”, p.183, Ludwig von Mises Institute

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Throughout history government has seldom hesitated from robbing its citizens in a crisis.

  James Cook

  Government, Robbing, Crisis

  6 Copy quote