Quotes about Civic duty

It's heartbreaking that so many hundreds of millions of people around the world are desperate for the right to vote, but here in America people stay home on election day.

I was born on Nov. 4, which is election day ... my birthday has made more men and sent more back to honest work than any other days in the year.

The moment for which I had waited so long came and I folded my ballot paper and cast my vote. Wow! I shouted, 'Yippee!' It was giddy stuff. It was like falling in love. The sky looked blue and more beautiful. I saw the people in a new light. They were beautiful, they were transfigured. I too was transfigured. It was dreamlike.

I call therefore a complete and generous education that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully and magnanimously all the offices both private and public, of peace and war.

America comes with both rights and responsibilities. You have, for example, the right to free speech, but you have the responsibility to not yell 'fire' in a crowded theater. If you don't live up to that responsibility, you face certain consequences. It's a simple but effective formula. Unfortunately, tenured professors are completely insulated from it. They can scream fire in their classrooms all they want - and then hide behind their tenure if anyone questions them on it.

Sometimes when I'm in the midst of all this, I can hear my mother saying, 'Democracy is just something you must do every day, like brushing your teeth.

Voting isn't the most we can do, but it is the least.

Voting isn't the most we can do, but the least. To have a democracy, you have to want one.

Democracy is just something you must do every day, like brushing you teeth.

Voting isn't the most we can do, but it's the least.

No man can possibly be benevolent or religious, to the full extent of his obligations, without concerning himself, to a greater or less extent, with the affairs of human government.

How does it become a man to behave towards the American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.