Quotes about Citizenship

FIRST CITIZEN: Come, come, we fear the worst; all shall be well. THIRD CITIZEN: When clouds appear, wise men put on their cloaks; When great leaves fall, the winter is at hand; When the sun sets, who doth not look for night? Untimely storms make men expect a dearth. All my be well; but if God sort it so. 'Tis more than we deserve, or I expect. SECOND CITIZEN: Truly, the souls of men are full of dread; Ye cannot reason almost with a man That looks not heavily and full of fear. THIRD CITIZEN: Before the times of change, still is it so: By a divine instinct men's minds distrust Ensuing dangers; as, by proof, we see The waters swell before a boisterous storm.

Why, friends, you go to do you know not what: Wherein hath Caesar thus deserved your loves? Alas, you know not: I must tell you then: You have forgot the will I told you of. . . . . Here is the will, and under Caesar's seal. To every Roman citizen he gives, To every several man, seventy-five drachmas. . . . . Moreover, he hath left you all his walks, His private arbours and new-planted orchards, On this side Tiber; he hath left them you, And to your heirs for ever, common pleasures, To walk abroad, and recreate yourselves. Here was a Caesar! when comes such another?

When a legislature undertakes to proscribe the exercise of a citizen's constitutional rights it acts lawlessly and the citizen can take matters into his own hands and proceed on the basis that such a law is no law at all.

The humblest citizen of all the land, when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error.

We are American farmers. We are Americans. We are farmers. Our grandsires freed this virgin continent,plowed it from East to West, and gave it to us.This land is for us and for our children tomake richer and more fruitful. We grow foods, fibers - fifteen times asmuch as we use. We grow men and women -- farmers, Presidents, and Senators, generals of industry,captains of commerce, missionaries, builders. Communists would call us capitalists, because we own land and we own tools. Capitalists might choose to call us laborers,because we work with our hands. Others may call us managers, because wedirect men and manage materials. Our children call us "Dad." We are also deacons, stockholders, mechanics, veterinarians, electricians, schoolboard members, Rotarians, voters, scientists,neighbors, men of good will. Our rules are Nature's rules, the laws of God. We command the magic of the seasons andthe miracles of science, because we obey Nature's rules. Our raw materials are soil and seed, animals, the atmosphere and the rain, and the mighty sun. We work with brains. We toil with musclesof steel, fed by the fires of lightning and byoils from the inner earth. We are partners with the laboratory, withthe factory, and with all the people. We provide industry with ever-renewableraw materials from the inexhaustible world ofplants. We buy products from the labor ofevery fellow-citizen.Our efficiencies have raised great cities andhappy towns, and have given all the peoplemeat and bread. We believe in work and in honor We believe in freedom. We are grateful for the American freedomthat has let us earn so many blessings. We know that liberty is our most preciouspossession. At the ballot-boxes and on thebattlefield we shall defend it. We have proven a new pattern of abun-dance. We pray that we may also help tomake a pattern for peace.

In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another.

The will of the entire people is the true basis of republican government, and a free expression . . . by the public vote of all citizens, without distinctions of race, color, occupation, or sex, is the only means by which that will can be ascertained.

The American nation, in its march onward and upward, can not publicly choke the intellectual and political activity of half its citizens by narrow statutes.

When citizens fear government, we call it tyranny When government fears citizens, we call it freedom

It is incontestable that the Constitution established a system of "dual sovereignty.". . . Although the States surrendered many of their powers to the new Federal Government, they retained a residuary and inviolable sovereignty. . . . The Framers explicitly chose a Constitution that confers upon Congress the power to regulate individuals, not States. The great innovation of this design was that our citizens would have two political capacities, one state and one federal, each protected from incursion by the other.

Every citizen has the right to keep and bear arms for security and defense, for lawful hunting and recreational use and for other lawful purposes.

It is undoubtedly true that all citizens capable of bearing arms constitute the reserved military force or reserve militia of the United States as well as the States. . . .

No private citizen has any reason or need at any time to possess a gun. This applies to both honest citizens and criminals. We realize the Constitution guarantees the "right to keep and bear arms" but this should be changed.

A man who neglects his duty as a citizen is not entitled to his rights as a citizen.

From thence the beasts be brought in, killed and clean washed by the hands of their bondsmen. For they permit not their free citizens to accustom themselves to the killing of beasts, through the use whereof they think clemency, the gentlest affection of our nature, by little and little to decay and perish.

Certainly one of the highest duties of the citizen is a scrupulous obedience to the laws of the nation. But it is not the highest duty.

Of the various executive abilities, no one excited more anxious concern than that of placing the interests of our fellow-citizens in the hands of honest men, with understanding sufficient for their stations. No duty is at the same time more difficult to fulfil. The knowledge of character possessed by a single individual is of necessity limited. To seek out the best through the whole Union, we must resort to the information which from the best of men, acting disinterestedly and with the purest motives, is sometimes incorrect.

I have come to a resolution myself as I hope every good citizen will, never again to purchase any article of foreign manufacture which can be had of American make, be the difference of price what it may.

The first requisite of a good citizen in this Republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his weight.

The object of government is the welfare of the people. The material progress and prosperity of a nation are desirable chiefly so far as they lead to the moral and material welfare of all good citizens.

Though conditions have grown puzzling in their complexity, though changes have been vast, yet we may remain absolutely sure of one thing; that now as ever in the past, and as it will ever be in-the future, there can be no substitute for elemental virtues, for the elemental qualities to which we allude when we speak of a man, not only as a good man, but as emphatically a man. We can build up the standard of individual citizenship and individual well-being, we can raise the national standard and make it what it can and shall be made, only by each of us steadfastly keeping in mind that there can be no substitute for the world-old commonplace qualities of truth, justice, and courage, thrift, industry, common sense and genuine sympathy with the fellow feelings of others.

Each child represents either a potential addition to the protective capacity and enlightened citizenship of the nation or, if allowed to suffer from neglect, a potential addition to the destructive forces of a community. . . . The interests of the nation are involved in the welfare of this array of children no less than in our great material affairs.

As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow-citizens, the people are confirmed by the next article in their right to keep and bear their private arms.

It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union.

The ideal state is that in which an injury done to the least of its citizens is an injury done to all.

I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.

. . . indeed what reason may not go to Schoole to the wisdome of Bees, Ants, and Spiders? what wise hand teacheth them to doe what reason cannot teach us? ruder heads stand amazed at those prodigious pieces of nature, Whales, Elephants, Dromidaries and Camels; these I confesse, are the Colossus and Majestick pieces of her hand; but in these narrow Engines there is more curious Mathematicks, and the civilitie of these little Citizens more neatly sets forth the wisdome of their Maker.

I have over and over again explained that the purpose of the Boy Scout and Girl Guide Movement is to build men and women as citizens endowed with the three H's namely, Health, Happiness and Helpfulness. The man or woman who succeeds in developing these three attributes has secured the main steps to success this Life.

What a country calls its vital economic interests are not the things which enable its citizens to live, but the things which enable it to make war. Petrol is much more likely than wheat to be a cause of international conflict.

The Constitution shall never be construed . . . to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.