Ordinary Citizens Quotes

• Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.

  Harry Emerson Fosdick

  Freedom, Democracies Have, People

  "The Home Book of Quotations, Classical and Modern". Book by Burton Egbert Stevenson, 1937.

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• The importance of the ordinary citizen is very greatly underestimated - not so much by those in authority as by the ordinary citizen himself.

  Jan Struther

  Democracy, Ordinary, Citizens

  Jan Struther (1956). “A pocketful of pebbles”

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• The average ordinary citizen can do a lot of different things when it comes to the climate crisis.

  Lawrence Bender

  Average, Climate, Ordinary

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• What is called “apathy” is, I believe, a feeling of helplessness on the part of the ordinary citizen, a feeling of impotence in the face of enormous power. It’s not that people are apathetic; they do care about what is going on, but don’t know what to do about it, so they do nothing, and appear to be indifferent.

  Howard Zinn

  Believe, People, Feelings

  "An Interview With Howard Zinn". Interview with Stefan Sirucek, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 30, 2010.

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• Revealingly, the central function of the Constitution as law--the supreme law--was to impose limitations not on the behavior of ordinary citizens but on the federal government. The government, and those who ran it, were not placed outside the law, but expressly targeted by it. Indeed, the Bill of Rights is little more than a description of the lines that the most powerful political officials are barred from crossing, even if they have the power to do so and even when the majority of citizens might wish them to do so.

  Glenn Greenwald

  Powerful, Law, Rights

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• Democracy is not just voting for your leaders; it's really premised upon ordinary citizens understanding the issues.

  Howard Rheingold

  Issues, Voting, Leader

  The Frontline Interview, www.pbs.org. June 15, 1995.

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• King's response to our crisis can be put in one word: revolution. A revolution in our priorities, a reevaluation of our values, a reinvigoration of our public life and a fundamental transformation of our way of thinking and living that promotes a transfer of power from oligarchs and plutocrats to everyday people and ordinary citizens.

  Cornel West

  Kings, Thinking, People

  "Dr. King Weeps From His Grave". www.nytimes.com. August 25, 2011.

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• The ruling class doesn't care about public safety. Having made it very difficult for States and localities to police themselves, having left ordinary citizens with no choice but to protect themselves as best they can, they now try to take our guns away. In fact they blame us and our guns for crime. This is so wrong that it cannot be an honest mistake.

  Malcolm Wallop

  Mistake, Gun, Class

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• The role of social media is critical because it helps to spread cognitive dissonance by connecting thought leaders and activists to ordinary citizens rapidly expanding the network of people who become willing to take action.

  Simon Mainwaring

  Media, People, Leader

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• A song has a few rights the same as ordinary citizens... if it happens to feel like flying where humans cannot fly... to scale mountains that are not there, who shall stop it?

  Charles Ives

  Music, Song, Rights

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• Rush Limbaugh is a principled conservative, master broadcaster and stinging social critic who has won his mammoth following through his own energy, individualism and wit. His daily radio show is the one reliable place ordinary citizens can turn to for a different perspective in the blizzard of propaganda and disinformation from the Northeastern media establishment. History will show that Limbaugh was a major force over the past decade in waking this country up from its p.c. coma.

  Camille Paglia

  Country, Past, Media

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• Through a blog, an ordinary citizen such as myself can use the Internet, this thing invented by Albert Gore, to talk from my house to the U.S. capital and to make use of my right to point out to government officials and to the media when they are wrong.

  John Jay Hooker

  Media, Government, House

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• A citizen at his home in Rockford, Illinois, or Boulder, Colorado, could read a newspaper, listen to a radio, or watch the round-the-clock coverage on television, but he had no way of connecting with those who shared his views. Nor was there a quick, readily available tool for an ordinary citizen to gather information on his own. In 1960, communication was a one-way street, and information was fundamentally inaccessible. The whole idea of summoning up data or reaching thousands of individuals with the touch of a finger was a science-fiction fantasy.

  Jeff Greenfield

  Communication, Home, Ideas

  Jeff Greenfield (2011). “Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reaga n”, p.36, Penguin

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• When Laura Poitras asked me if she could film our encounters, I was extremely reluctant. I’m grateful that I allowed her to persuade me. The result is a brave and brilliant film that deserves the honor and recognition it has received. My hope is that this award will encourage more people to see the film and be inspired by its message that ordinary citizens, working together, can change the world.

  Edward Snowden

  Grateful, Awards, People

  "Edward Snowden Congratulates Laura Poitras For Winning Best Documentary Oscar For Citizenfour". www.aclu.org. February 22, 2015.

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• There is a denial of the value of the individual. Christianity affirms the value of each individual soul. Nazism denies it. The individual is sacrificed to the idol of the German Leader, German State or the German race. The ordinary citizen is allowed to hear and think only as the rulers decree.

  Clement Attlee

  Thinking, Race, Idols

  Clement Richard Attlee (1940). “War comes to Britain: speeches of the Rt. Hon. C. R. Atlee, M.P.”

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• Architects today tend to depreciate themselves, to regard themselves as no more than just ordinary citizens without the power to reform the future.

  Kenzo Tange

  Design, Today, Ordinary

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• The American elite is almost beyond redemption. . . . Moral relativism has set in so deeply that the gilded classes have become incapable of discerning right from wrong. Everything can be explained away, especially by journalists. Life is one great moral mush--sophistry washed down with Chardonnay. The ordinary citizens, thank goodness, still adhere to absolutes.... It is they who have saved the republic from creeping degradation while their 'betters' were derelict.

  Charles Dickens

  Class, Ordinary, Citizens

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• If I have any regrets, I could say that I'm sorry I wasn't a better writer or a better singer...When I was younger, I felt it was my duty to wake people up. I thought poetry was asleep. I thought rock 'n' roll was asleep...An artist may have burdens the ordinary citizen doesn't know, but the ordinary citizen has burdens that many artists never even touch.

  Patti Smith

  Sorry, Regret, Artist

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• As for cages themselves, an ordinary citizen who kept dogs in similar conditions for their entire lives would risk prosecution for cruelty. A pig producer who keeps an animal of comparable intelligence in this manner, however, is more likely to be rewarded with a tax concession or, in some countries, a direct government subsidy.

  Peter Singer

  Country, Dog, Animal

  Peter Singer (1975). “Animal liberation: a new ethics for our treatment of animals”

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• If we want to keep farmers in business, it's time for all of us, ordinary citizens and policy makers alike, to begin learning how that might be done. Sharing the Harvest is a great place to start.

  Joan Dye Gussow

  Ordinary, Citizens, Done

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• It is in a way a mystery that, instead of demanding that their governments give primary attention to their own needs and aspirations, most of the citizens of big counties-those, that is, that have the status of being "powers" in the world-far from being self-centered or materialistic as they are commonly credited with being, the ordinary citizen and his elected representative all too often turn out to be romantics, ready and eager to sacrifice programs of health, education and welfare for the power and pride of the nation.

  J. William Fulbright

  Educational, Pride, Sacrifice

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• An artist may have burdens the ordinary citizen doesn't know, but the ordinary citizen has burdens that many artists never even touch.

  Patti Smith

  Artist, House, Ordinary

  "The Wisdom of Patti Smith" by Victoria Dawson Hoff, www.elle.com. December 30, 2013.

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• I was brought up in a very ordinary family, in fact, a worker's family. Both my father and mother were ordinary citizens.

  Vladimir Putin

  Mother, Father, Ordinary

  Interview with Mike Wallace, en.kremlin.ru. May 9, 2005.

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• The president felt that it was important to send an ordinary citizen to experience the excitement of space travel as a representative for all Americans.

  Christa McAuliffe

  Travel, Space, House

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• The America I know is great - not because government made it great but because ordinary citizens like me, like my father and like you are given the opportunity every day to do extraordinary things.

  Mia Love

  Father, Opportunity, Government

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