Civic Virtue Quotes

• Those who enjoy the blessings of liberty under a divinely inspired constitution should promote morality, and they should practice what the Founding Fathers called civic virtue.

  Dallin H. Oaks

  Father, Blessing, Practice

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• It is the State which educates its citizens in civic virtue, gives them a consciousness of their mission and welds them into unity.

  Benito Mussolini

  Giving, Unity, Citizens

  Benito Mussolini (2012). “My Autobiography: With "The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism"”, p.237, Courier Corporation

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• A constitutional democracy is in serious trouble if its citizenry does not have a certain degree of education and civic virtue.

  Phillip E. Johnson

  Democracy, Degrees, Doe

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• Distrust of authority should be the first civic duty.

  Norman Douglas

  Firsts, Authority, Should

  Norman Douglas (1922). “Alone”

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• The American founders, when framing their governments, looked to the Bible for insights into human nature, civic virtue, social order, political authority and other concepts essential to the establishment of a political society. They saw in Scripture political and legal models - such as republicanism, separation of powers, and due process of law - that they believed enjoyed divine favor and were worthy of emulation in their polities.

  Daniel L Dreisbach

  Order, Law, Government

  Source: www.biblegateway.com

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• Citizens ... should be practitioners of civic virtue in their conduct toward government. They should be ever willing to fulfill the duties of citizenship. This includes compulsory duties like military service and the numerous voluntary actions they must take if they are to preserve the principle of limited government through citizen self-reliance.

  Dallin H. Oaks

  Military, America, Government

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• Every nation-state tends towards the imperial - that is the point. Through banks, armies, secret police, propaganda, courts and jails, treaties, taxes, laws and orders, myths of civil obedience, assumptions of civic virtue at the top. Still it should be said of the political left, we expect something better. And correctly. We put more trust in those who show a measure of compassion, who denounce the hideous social arrangements that make war inevitable and human desire omnipresent; which fosters corporate selfishness, panders to appetites and disorder, waste the earth.

  Daniel Berrigan

  War, Army, Compassion

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Every nation-state tends towards the imperial - that is the point. Through banks, armies, secret police, propaganda, courts and jails, treaties, taxes, laws and orders, myths of civil obedience, assumptions of civic virtue at the top.

  Daniel Berrigan

  Army, Order, Law

  Daniel Berrigan (2009). “The Nightmare of God: The Book of Revelation”, p.22, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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• Competing against each other leaves little space for reciprocity and the growth of social capital. Running against another in a race may benefit our speed, but jointly organising the sports day produces cooperation and trust. There are many situations where cooperation and reciprocity are more effective than competition. Civic virtues come from building on what we have in common rather than by using our differences to create in-groups, outgroups and fear driven competition

  Eva Cox

  Sports, Running, Race

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• 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.

  Eli Pariser

  Self, People, World

  Eli Pariser (2011). “The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web Is Changing What We Read and How We Think”, p.21, Penguin

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• A God who chastises our lack of faith, our vices, the little esteem in which we hold dignity and the civic virtues. We tolerate vice, we make ourselves its accomplices, at times we applaud it, and it is just, very just that we suffer the consequences, that our children suffer them. It is the God of liberty ... who obliges us to love it, by making the yoke heavy for us - a God of mercy, of equity, who while He chastises us betters us and only grants prosperity to him who has merited it through his efforts. The school of suffering tempers, the arena of combat strengthens the soul.

  Jose Rizal

  Children, School, Effort

  Jose Rizal, Charles Derbyshire (1912). “The reign of greed: a complete English version of El Filibusterismo from the Spanish”

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• Thus we can see that – at least at the level of economics – democracy is a sort of slow-motion suicide, in which you are told that it is the highest civic virtue to approve of those who want to rob you.

  Stefan Molyneux

  Suicide, Democracy, Levels

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• There could never be enough rules so finely crafted as to anticipate and cover every situation, and even if there were, enforcement would be impossibly expensive and burdensome. This approach leads to diminished freedom for everyone...In the end, it is only an internal moral compass in each individual that can effectively deal with the root causes as well as the symptoms of societal decay. Societies will struggle in vain to establish the common good until sin is denounced as sin and moral discipline takes its place in the pantheon of civic virtues.

  D. Todd Christofferson

  Struggle, Roots, Discipline

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