Quotes about Citizens

Wherever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government

The people are the only safe depositories of their own liberty, & they are not safe unless enlightened to a certain degree.

The government is supposed to conform to our will. By taking the most important thing you have, your health and your health care, and turning that over to the government, you fundamentally shift the power, a huge chunk of it, from the people to the government. This is not the direction that we want the government to go in this nation.

The fact is, my friends, most Americans don't want more government. They want less government.

It is almost inconceivable that citizens of that time were willing to support so bloody a war, by putting so high a price upon Union and Liberty.

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.

Equality, citizens, is not the whole of society on a level, a society of tall blades of grass and small oaks, or a number of entangled jealousies. It is, legally speaking, every aptitude having the same opportunity for a career; politically all consciences having the same right. Equality has an organ, gratuitous and compulsory education. We must begin with the right to the alphabet.

I truly believe that firearms in the hands of law abiding citizen's makes our families and our communities more safe, not less safe.

Let us at all times remember that all American citizens are brothers of a common country, and should dwell together in bonds of fraternal feeling.

I've learned to place my faith in my fellow citizens, especially those of the next generation, whose conviction in the equal worth of all people seems to come as second nature, and who insist on making real those principles that their parents and teachers told them were true but perhaps never fully believed themselves.

Cynicism is fashionable these days. But I got to tell you, cynicism didn't put a man on the moon. Cynicism did not create the opportunity for all of our citizens to vote. Cynicism has never won a war, or cured a disease, or started a business, or fed young minds. I believe in optimism. I believe in hope ... Don't let the cynics get you down. Cynicism is a choice - and hope is a better choice.