Quotes about Citizens

Majorities, no less than minorities, need the assurance that they are being treated fairly, otherwise they are sure to mobilize through democratic channels to affirm their interests. By not only tolerating but enshrining it in law, proportional representation is rapidly balkanizing the country along racial lines, destroying the confidence of citizens that the law will treat them equally and provoking a strong and largely justified backlash.

Inequality of outcomes is not seen as a necessary evil that government should seek to remedy; rather, the government itself exists to guard citizens' right to accumulate unequal fortunes and property.

He totally underestimated the press reaction. First, the press thrives on confrontation. They also love stories about extremes, whether they're great successes or terrible failures. This story had it all. Perhaps most important, many reporters tend to see themselves as consumer advocates. Almost nothing gets them as outraged as a boondoggle that victimizes average citizens. The city's fiasco at the Wollman Rink was an absolute classic.

Fellow citizens! God reigns, and the Government at Washington still lives!

The equality of rights of all citizens is the basic tenet of modern democratic societies.

We must have faith in the people of this country and faith in our principles.

But are we even capable of maintaining a Republic anymore? Are there enough citizens willing to do the hard work that self-rule requires, or have we become a people who would rather be cared for, fed, clothed, housed, and told what's best for us by a parentlike state? Unfortunately, the evidence suggests the latter.

The only leader America should ever have is someone who understands that the people are the government.

A city is composed of different kinds of men; similar people cannot bring a city into existence.

The government is us; we are the government, you and I.

The man [Grant] who more than any other, save Lincoln, had changed us into a nation whose citizens were all freemen, realized entirely that these freemen would remain free only while they kept mastery over their own evil passions.

Human law does not prescribe concerning all the acts of every virtue: but only in regard to those that are ordainable to the common good—either immediately, as when certain things are done directly for the common good—or mediately, as when a lawgiver prescribes certain things pertaining to good order, whereby the citizens are directed in the upholding of the common good of justice and peace.