Citizens Quotes - Page 22

• It is true that I voted against the National Defense Authorization Act, because when I campaigned in Texas I told voters in Texas that I would oppose the federal government having the authority to detain U.S. citizens permanently with no due process. I have repeatedly supported an effort to take that out of that bill, and I honored that campaign commitment.

  Ted Cruz

  Commitment, Government, Texas

  CNN Facebook Republican Presidential Debate, cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com. December 16, 2015.

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• Oil is dead, on its way to extinction. As a group of citizens we must speak up and act towards ending fracking. Let your government know you will not tolerate a technology that not only poisons your family but our creature family at large; let them know you want sustainable power and all the jobs that will come with that new growth.

  Ian Somerhalder

  Jobs, Technology, Oil

  "Ian Somerhalder, ‘The Vampire Diaries’ Actor, Talks Love, Social Media And Social Change With Origin Magazine". Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 21, 2013.

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• Like all of you I'm angry. I'm angry at what's happening to our nation. Citizens, it's time to take our country back.

  Carly Fiorina

  Country, Angry, Happenings

  Rush Transcript second debate: CNN Facebook Republican Presidential Debate, cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com. December 16, 2015.

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• If you're an American citizen and you decide to join up with ISIS, we're not going to read you your Miranda rights. You're going to be treated as an enemy combatant, a member of an army attacking this country.

  Marco Rubio

  Country, Army, Rights

  Source: cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com

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• I would like to invite the citizens of Great Britain and the citizens of the U.S. and the citizens of the world to come here and walk freely through the streets of Venezuela, to talk to anyone they want, to watch television, to read the papers. We are building a true democracy, with human rights for everyone, social rights, education, health care, pensions, social security, and jobs.

  Hugo Chavez

  Jobs, Rights, Democracy

  Source: www.progressive.org

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• I'm not trying to push my political agenda on anybody. I'll do that like any other citizen by giving money to a party or candidate I believe in. I don't mind going out and endorsing somebody I believe in. But when we're talking about my films, I don't think my politics should have anything to do with it.

  Sydney Pollack

  Party, Believe, Thinking

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• There's a false narrative that only the political class has the wisdom and the ability to be commander-in- chief. But if you go back and you study the design of our country, it was really designed for the citizen statesman.

  Benjamin Carson

  Country, Class, Design

  Source: cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com

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• One of the most troubling aspects of the Rubio-Schumer Gang of Eight Bill was that it gave President [Barack] Obama blanket authority to admit refugees, including Syrian refugees without mandating any background checks whatsoever. Now we've seen what happened in San Bernardino. When you are letting people in, when the FBI can't vet them, it puts American citizens at risk.

  Ted Cruz

  Eight, People, Risk

  Republican Presidential Debate, www.nytimes.com. December 15, 2015.

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• I believe it's our responsibility as citizens to get in there and not accept the constant failure of prisons to deal with racism, lack of privilege, and impoverishment - not accept any of that. Just get in there!

  Jimmy Santiago Baca

  Believe, Responsibility, Racism

  Interview with Barbara Stahura, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. January 31, 2003.

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• American democracy is supposed to be the paradigm for the rest of the world, and it no longer is. Citizens cannot be guaranteed that they can walk into a voting booth with any assurance that their vote will be counted.

  Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

  Voting, Democracy, World

  Interview with David Kupfer for The Progressive Magazine, www.thirdworldtraveler.com. November 2006.

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• I don't think I am a citizen of the world; I am very much a citizen of my own country. But my own country is closely related to other parts of the world and influenced by what happens there.

  Nadine Gordimer

  Country, Thinking, World

  Source: www.progressive.org

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• Unfortunately, every American citizen takes the same position... that we don’t like negative advertisements. But they work! And, as you see, many a candidate has prevailed by tearing down the reputation of an opponent in a more advantageous position.

  Jimmy Carter

  Negative, Opponents, Reputation

  "President Jimmy Carter ‘NIV Lessons from Life Bible’ Interview with Kam Williams". Interview with Kam Williams, newsblaze.com. May 22, 2012.

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• Here I encounter the most popular fallacy of our times. It is not considered sufficient that the law should guarantee to every citizen the free and inoffensive use of his faculties for physical, intellectual and moral self-improvement. Instead, it is demanded that the law should directly extend welfare, education, and morality throughout the nation. This is the seductive lure of socialism. And I repeat: these two uses of the law are in direct contradiction to each other.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Self, Law, Two

  Frederic Bastiat (2006). “The Law”, p.20, Cosimo, Inc.

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• However much pains may be taken to combine the soldier and the citizen in one and the same individual, whatever may be done to nationalize wars, never will it be possible to do away with the professionalism of the business; and if that cannot be done, then those who belong to it will always look upon themselves as a kind of guild, in the regulations, laws, and customs in which the "Spirit of War" finds its expression. It would be very wrong to look down upon this corporate spirit, or esprit de corps, which may and should exist more or less in every Army.

  Carl von Clausewitz

  Pain, War, Taken

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• Americans who feel the most ignored these days are not the screamers. They are the solid citizens who are sick to death of pols who play to the rant.

  Joe Klein

  Play, Sick, Ignored

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• It's not the physical location of birth that defines citizenship, but whether your parents are citizens, and the express or implied consent to jurisdiction of the sovereign.

  Phyllis Schlafly

  Parent, Sovereign, Location

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• Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.

  James Madison

  Party, Rights, Government

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (2015). “The Federalist Papers: A Collection of Essays Written in Favour of the New Constitution”, p.47, Coventry House Publishing

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• The new laws passed by Congress in the name of fighting terrorism pose a greater danger to the civil liberties of American citizens than to the operations of terrorists. Powers once assumed are never relinquished, just as bureaucracies, once created, never die.

  Charley Reese

  Fighting, Law, Names

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• No republic can long exist unless a substantial equality in the wealth of citizens prevails.

  Edward Bellamy

  Long, Republic, Wealth

  Edward Bellamy (1937). “Edward Bellamy speaks again!: Articles--public addresses--letters”

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• One of the most effective tools that the Cheney-Bush junta has used to marginalize dissenting or even mildly inquisitive American citizens has been the accusation of being unpatriotic.

  Viggo Mortensen

  Tools, Accusation, Used

  "Eats Roadkill, Speaks Danish." by Amy Wallace, www.esquire.com. February 28, 2006.

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• The elective franchise is withheld from one half of its citizens...because the word 'people,' by an unparalleled exhibition of lexicon graphical acrobatics, has been turned and twisted to mean all who were shrewd and wise enough to have themselves born boys instead of girls, or who took the trouble to be born white instead of black.

  Mary Church Terrell

  Girl, Wise, Mean

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• We should not feel so sorely grieved if no man who had not attained the full stature of a Webster, Clay, Van Buren, or Gerrit Smith could claim the right of the elective franchise. But to have drunkards, idiots, horse-racing, rum-selling rowdies, ignorant foreigners, and silly boys fully recognized, while we ourselves are thrust out from all the rights that belong to citizens, it is too grossly insulting to the dignity of woman to be longer quietly submitted to.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Horse, Silly, Boys

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan Brownell Anthony, Ellen Carol DuBois (1992). “The Elizabeth Cady Stanton-Susan B. Anthony reader: correspondence, writings, speeches”, Northeastern Univ Pr

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• I believe we're all aware that there are people and organizations throughout the world who are bent on destroying America, everything we stand for and inflicting harm on American citizens. It is the obligation of the president of the United States to respond to those. I believe, I must add, that this adminstration for the last seven months has neglected compelling national security threats besides this ... I hope that the president will not confine his activities to just this.

  John McCain

  Believe, Seven Months, Organization

  "A Quick Look At Reactions In Congress". www.cnn.com. August 20, 1998.

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• Physical fitness is vital for the optimal function of the brain, for retardation of the onset of serious arteriosclerosis which is beginning to appear in early adult life, and for longevity, and a useful and healthy life for our older citizens.

  Paul Dudley White

  Healthy, Brain, Adults

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• Ours is a nation of laws: of citizens who live under them and for the citizens who enforce them. So, to a community in Ferguson that is rightly hurting and looking for answers, let me call once again for us to seek some understanding rather than simply holler at each other. Let's seek to heal rather than to wound each other.

  Barack Obama

  Hurt, Law, Community

  Barack Obama's remarks on Ferguson, Mo. and Iraq at the White House in Washington, D.C., www.washingtonpost.com. August 18, 2014.

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