Citizens Quotes

1. "Happiness statistics may be most valuable in smaller, local discussions. Understanding how different sorts of programs affect the well-being of citizens would be enormously helpful to a mayor choosing between building a new bridge or offering a tax cut."
Author: Adam Davidson

2. "Many countries persecute their own citizens and intern them in prisons or concentration camps. Oppression is becoming more and more a part of the systems."
Author: Alva Myrdal

3. "From the slave ship to the citizenship we faced a lot of bullship"
Author: Amiri Baraka

4. "There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for me to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed or enforced nor objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt."
Author: Ayn Rand

5. "Communism? Most people have no idea what it is. I do not exaggerate. Look around this restaurant, ask any of these fine citizens. 'Excuse me, sir, I've been thinking of an idea, a bunch of working people owning the means of their own production. What do you make of that?' You know, he might be all for it."
Author: Barbara Kingsolver

6. "I am an American, not an Asian-American. My rejection of hyphenation has been called race treachery, but it is really a demand that America deliver the promises of its dream to all its citizens equally."
Author: Bharati Mukherjee

7. "And if citizens of New Orleans who are really contemplating coming back heard that we're really intent upon making the place secure again - regardless of whether the levees held or not - then I think a rebuilding process would really take shape."
Author: Billy Tauzin

8. "It was not that donors had no loyalty to each other, but they were not ashamed to betray a fellow donor. In its wisdom the Alliance promulgated the moral rules—the main one being one's duty to the Alliance. The Alliance was sacred—all else secondary. But not all donors—or citizens—bought into that. Many knew in their hearts there was more to life."
Author: Cate Campbell Beatty

9. "A country so rich that it can send people to the moon still has hundreds of thousands of its citizens who can't read. That's terribly troubling to me."
Author: Charles Kuralt

10. "They who say that we should love our fellow-citizens but not foreigners, destroy the universal brotherhood of mankind, with which benevolence and justice would perish forever"
Author: Cicero

11. "Allowing ourselves to become a nation of silent, secretive, timid citizens is likely to result in a system of democracy and justice that is neither very democratic nor very just."
Author: Dahlia Lithwick

12. "By deriving it's just powers from the governed, government becomes primarily a mechanism for defense against bodily harm, theft, and involuntary servitude. It cannot claim the power to redistribute money or property nor to force reluctant citizens to perform acts of charity against their will. Government is created by the people. No individual possesses the power to take another's wealth or to force others to do good, so no government has the the right to do such things either. The creature cannot exceed the creator."
Author: Ezra Taft Benson

13. "Rome tolerated every abominable practice, embraced every foul idea in the name of freedom and the rights of the common man. Citizens no longer carried on deviant behavior in private, but pridefully displayed it in public. It was those with moral values who could no longer freely walk in a public park without having to witness a revolting display.What happened to the public censors who protected the majority of citizenry from moral decadence? Did freedom have to mean abolishing common decency? Did freedom mean anyone could do anything they wanted anytime they wanted, without consequences?"
Author: Francine Rivers

14. "The soldier is the Army. No army is better than its soldiers. The Soldier is also a citizen. In fact, the highest obligation and privilege of citizenship is that of bearing arms for one's country"
Author: George S. Patton Jr.

15. "Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA - ordinary citizens don't need guns, as their having guns doesn't serve the State."
Author: Heinrich Himmler

16. "It is perhaps because of the Iranian concept of the home and garden (and not the city or town it is in) as the defining center of life that Iranians find living in a society with such stringent rules of public behavior somewhat tolerable. Iranian society by and large cares very little about what goes on in the homes and gardens of private citizens, but the Islamic government cares very much how its citizens behave once they venture outside their walls."
Author: Hooman Majd

17. "Let us give future generations the gift of Earth citizenship by first giving it to ourselves."
Author: Ilchi Lee

18. "I sat at a table in my shadowy kitchen, staring down a bottle of Boone's FarmHard Lemonade, when a magic fluctuation hit. My wards shivered and died, leaving my home stripped of its defenses. The TV flared into life, unnaturally loud in the empty house.I raised my eyebrow at the bottle and bet it that another urgent bulletin was on.The bottle lost."Urgent bulletin!" Margaret Chang announced. "The Attorney General advises all citizens that any attempt at summoning or other activities resulting in the appearance of a supernaturally powerful being can be hazardous to yourself and to other citizens.""No shit," I told the bottle."
Author: Ilona Andrews

19. "The right of every American to first-class citizenship is the most important issue of our time."
Author: Jackie Robinson

20. "But in some great souls, who consider themselves as citizens of the world, and forcing the imaginary barriers that separate people from people..."
Author: Jean Jacques Rousseau

21. "The Nordic countries are leading the way on women's equality, recognizing women as equal citizens rather than commodities for sale."
Author: Johanna Siguroardottir

22. "The key players are now all in place in Washington and in state governments across America to officially label carbon dioxide as a pollutant and enact laws that tax us citizens for our carbon footprints."
Author: John Coleman

23. "There is no better illustration of that crisis than the fact that the president is openly violating our nation's laws by authorizing the NSA to engage in warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens."
Author: John Conyers

24. "If we're going to change the laws, let's change them in ways which makes it easier to catch criminals, and yet at the same time protect the Second Amendment rights of our law-abiding citizens."
Author: John Dingell

25. "Well, again, a gun sale database is just trying to get the Department of Justice to keep track of the guns that they're purchasing and supplying to drug dealers and murderers. I mean, wow. Come on, let's get the government under control before we start restricting the rights of - innocent citizens."
Author: John Mica

26. "Each person possesses and inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this reason, justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others. It does not allow that the sacrifices imposed on a few are outweighed by the larger sum of advantages enjoyed by many. Therefore in a just society the liberties of equal citizenship are taken as settled; the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests. The only thing that permits us to acquiesce in an erroneous theory is the lack of a better one; analogously, an injustice is tolerable only when it is necessary to avoid an even greater injustice. Being first virtues of human activities, truth and justice are uncompromising."
Author: John Rawls

27. "Thanks to Granna, Werner and Walter had grown up to be highly functioning, productive citizens -- but if you were to ask Walter, Werner had a far easier time of it and lived his life with the sanctified nonchalance of those who will do anything to avoid dissecting their souls."
Author: Julia Glass

28. "The whole calamity would be in one of those police reports that D. B. Sinclair and his "concerned citizens" filed carefully under "T" for "Things" at the back of a locked filing cabinet in the vehicle-licensing centre a day before a bonfire got accidentally out of control."
Author: Kate Griffin

29. "Architects today tend to depreciate themselves, to regard themselves as no more than just ordinary citizens without the power to reform the future."
Author: Kenzo Tange

30. "Frustration is an interesting emotional state, because it tends to bring out the worst in whoever is frustrated. Frustrated babies tend to throw food and make a mess. Frustrated citizens tend to execute kings and queens and make a democracy. And frustrated moths tend to bang up against lightbulbs and make light fixtures all dusty."
Author: Lemony Snicket

31. "Each state, so that it does not abridge the great fundamental rights belonging, under the Constitution, to all citizens, may grant or withhold such civil rights as it pleases; all that is required is that, in this respect, its laws shall be impartial."
Author: Lyman Trumbull

32. "The mania for giving the Government power to meddle with the private affairs of cities or citizens is likely to cause endless trouble, through the rivaly of schools and creeds that are anxious to obtain official recognition, and there is great danger that our people will lose our independence of thought and action which is the cause of much of our greatness, and sink into the helplessness of the Frenchman or German who expects his government to feed him when hungry, clothe him when naked, to prescribe when his child may be born and when he may die, and, in fine, to regulate every act of humanity from the cradle to the tomb, including the manner in which he may seek future admission to paradise."
Author: Mark Twain

33. "In modern societies, some members of ethnic minority groups do not want to feel compelled to heed the voices of their communities when participating as citizens."
Author: Michael Kenny

34. "I can only hope the federal aid made available today will be sufficient in our recovery efforts, and pray that our citizens continue to be safe from the fallout of this dangerous natural disaster."
Author: Mike Rogers

35. "Pakistan produces people of extraordinary bravery. But no nation should ever require its citizens to be that brave."
Author: Nadeem Aslam

36. "Aeschines knew that if he had any hopes of humbling his charismatic rival, he had to reinforce his views with facts, not heated speculation. Addressing a legal assembly of citizens known as graphe paranomon, he built his attack around this tart observation: "A fine thing, my fellow Athenians, a fine thing is the preservation of public records. Records do not change, and they do not shift sides with traitors, but they grant to you, the people, the opportunity to know, whenever you want, which men, once bad, through some transformation now claim to be good"."
Author: Nicholas A. Basbanes

37. "Enrolling in the Medicare Prescription Drug Program will be a great savings for most senior citizens."
Author: Paul Gillmor

38. "A free economy and strong communities honor the dignity of every person, rewarding effort with justice, promoting upward mobility, and building solidarity among citizens."
Author: Paul Ryan

39. "No society has succeeded in abolishing the distinction between ruler and ruled... to be a ruler gives one special status and, usually, special privileges. During the Communist era, important officials in the Soviet Union had access to special shops selling delicacies unavailable to ordinary citizens; before China allowed capitalist enterprises in its economy, travelling by car was a luxury limited to tourists and those high in the party hierarchy Throughout the 'communist' nations, the abolition of the old ruling class was followed by the rise of a new class of party bosses and well-placed bureaucrats, whose behaviour and life-style came more and more to resemble that of their much-denounced predecessors. In the end, nobody believed in the system any more. That, couple with its inability to match the productivity of the less bureaucratically controlled, more egoistically driven capitalist economies, led to its downfall."
Author: Peter Singer

40. "I see little difference in the attitudes of those who consider themselves Christian and those who are openly secular and agnostic. Most Christian citizenship appears to be clearly right here - on this little bit of very unreal estate."
Author: Richard Rohr

41. "People inside of belonging systems are very threatened by those who are not within that group. They are threatened by anyone who has found their citizenship in places they cannot control."
Author: Richard Rohr

42. "From my standpoint, I want to work with homeland security, justice to make sure that U.S. citizens' vote is not diluted."
Author: Rick Scott

43. "Ivanov's fear was of a literary nature. That is, it was the fear that afflicts most citizens who, one fine (or dark) day, choose to make the practice of writing, and especially the practice of fiction writing, an integral part of their lives. Fear of being no good. Also fear of being overlooked. But above all, fear of being no good. Fear that one's efforts and striving will come to nothing. Fear of the step that leaves no trace. Fear of the forces of chance and nature that wipe away shallow prints. Fear of dining alone and unnoticed. Fear of going unrecognized. Fear of failure and making a spectacle of oneself. But above all, fear of being no good. Fear of forever dwelling in the hell of bad writers."
Author: Roberto Bolaño

44. "Police and firefighters are great, but they don't create wealth. They protect it. That's crucial. Teaching is a wonderful profession. Teachers help educate people to become good citizens so that citizens can then go create wealth. But they don't create the wealth themselves."
Author: Rush Limbaugh

45. "...God sent His Prince, Jesus, into rebel territory to conquer evil and free us to be true citizens of the Kingdom again... That's the essential story we find in the Bible, and it's the essential story at the heart of each of our lives. And that's what all good fantasy stories have at their core, whether or not it's a conscious theme."
Author: Sarah Arthur

46. "Our pluralist society must provide its citizens with the tools to understand religions, their symbols and their practices."
Author: Tariq Ramadan

47. "A government afraid of its citizens is a Democracy. Citizens afraid of government is tyranny!"
Author: Thomas Jefferson

48. "The Holocaust illustrates the consequences of prejudice, racism and stereotyping on a society. It forces us to examine the responsibilities of citizenship and confront the powerful ramifications of indifference and inaction."
Author: Tim Holden

49. "Jordan is the only Arab state that has provided citizenship to Palestinian refugees and integrated them. But something has to be done about the Palestinians living in refugee camps in Syria and Lebanon."
Author: Walter Russell Mead

50. "If US per capita income continues to grow at a rate of 1.5 percent a year, the country will have plenty of money to finance comfortable retirements and high-quality healthcare for all citizens, including those at the bottom of the wage ladder."
Author: William Greider

Citizens Quotes Pictures