Quotes about Citizens

Faith is either something that informs one at all times or it isn't anything at all, really. When the Chinese government tells its citizens that they can worship in a certain building on a certain day, but once they leave that building they must bow to the secular orthodoxy of the state, you have a cynical lie at work. They've substituted a toothless "freedom of worship" for "freedom of religion".

Self-government will not work unless the citizens bear the responsibility to vote in such a way that continues their freedoms and their ability to have free elections, that continues their economic prosperity. They have to vote in a way that does not trade the future for the present.

He understood that the law could not force people to do what was right. In fact, the laws of America didn't try to do this. They provided freedom, and what the citizens did with that freedom was something else altogether. "Thus," Tocqueville writes, "while the law permits the Americans to do what they please, religion prevents them from conceiving, and forbids them to commit, what is rash or unjust."

A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.

The life of a republic lies certainly in the energy, virtue, and intelligence of its citizens.

Whenever a nation turns its back on God or beings to live as if He does not exist, it begins to show up in its citizens' disregard for human life.

In the West, especially, we don't often consciously feel the actions of government impacting our lives from day to day.

We cannot separate the history of a nation from the people of that nation.

Our government sprang from and was made for the people -- not the people for the government. To them it owes an allegiance from them it must derive its courage, strength, and wisdom.

Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate power of the society but the people themselves.

There is nothing wrong with America that faith, love of freedom, intelligence, and energy of her citizens cannot cure.