Most Americans aren’t the sort of citizens the Founding Fathers expected; they are contented serfs. Far from being active critics of government, they assume that its might makes it right.
Citizen Quotes
I always say, as you know, that if my fellow citizens want to go Hell I will help them. It’s my job.
I am a citizen, not of Athens or Greece, but of the world.
A citizen has a complex duty. He ought to learn to express his opinions and to make up his mind pro and con on the principal public issues. He ought never to miss the ballot box. And when he casts his vote for somebody, he should weigh that somebody in the scale of morals – […]
As citizens of this democracy, you are the rulers and the ruled, the law-givers and the law-abiding, the beginning and the end.
It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.
The Earth Is But One Country And Mankind Its Citizens
You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence.
If the press is not free, if speech is not independent and untrammeled, if the mind is shackled or made impotent through fear, it makes no difference under what form of government you live, you are a subject and not a citizen.
Citizenship comes first today in our crowded world… No man can enjoy the privileges of education and thereafter with a clear conscience break his contract with society. To respect that contract is to be mature, to strengthen it is to be a good citizen, to do more than your share under it is noble.
