Top 100 Citizen Quotes
#1. If you're running a dictatorship, you don't really have to worry about the welfare or the property rights of the ordinary citizen. Only the people who keep you in power, a very small group, matter.
Bruce Bueno De Mesquita
#2. I am frankly sick and tired of the political preachers telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in A, B, C, and D. Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me?
Barry M. Goldwater
#3. Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.
Thomas Jefferson
#4. The same government that requires a taxpaying citizen to document every statement on his tax return decrees that questioning a welfare applicant demeans and humiliates him.
Ronald Reagan
#5. Where the citizen uses a mere sliver or board, the pioneer uses the whole trunk of a tree.
Henry David Thoreau
#6. An American citizen is not going to be extradited to Japan for saving whales.
Paul Watson
#7. In the period where I had to live the life of a citizen - a life where, like everybody else, I did tons of laundry and cleaned toilet bowls, changed hundreds of diapers and nursed children - I learned a lot.
Patti Smith
#8. When I lost my son, I became a citizen of a country I never knew existed.
Stephanie Oakes
#9. I am obligated and I will pay hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes to the American government. I already paid and I will keep paying whatever taxes I owe based on my time as a U.S. citizen.
Eduardo Saverin
#10. A responsible citizen is the one that sees something wrong in the society, something he is not satisfied with or that he cannot agree with and responds not by blaming the government or leaders. But by designing ways and means of bringing a lasting solution to the issues at hand
Sunday Adelaja
#11. First Citizen Come, come, we fear the worst; all shall be well. Third Citizen When clouds appear, wise men put on their cloaks;
William Shakespeare
#12. I don't want to be a lobbyist. I want to provide strategic advice to companies. I said both of those things in the course of the interview, and I made clear this is a matter only for after I had become a private citizen and I was no longer a member of parliament.
Geoff Hoon
#13. The future of Haiti must be linked to the respect of the rights of every single citizen.
Jean-Bertrand Aristide
#14. The tragedy of the United States in this century is not the crackup of an empire, which we never knew what to do with in the first place, but the collapse of the idea of the citizen as someone autonomous whose private life is not subject to orders from above.
Gore Vidal
#15. An orchard, good tillage, good grounds, seem a fixture, like a gold mine, or a river, to a citizen; but to a large farmer, not much more fixed than the state of the crop.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#16. My father, a refugee from Eastern Europe, was preparing a fraudulent marriage to an American citizen as a route to this country when he was sponsored, making fraud unnecessary. My wife's grandfather bought papers from another Chinese villager to be able to come to the United States.
Nicholas Kristof
#17. If a country complains that they don't have good leaders, those leaders are only as a result of the prevailing value system that every citizen of that country has been exposed to.
Sunday Adelaja
#18. English should be our official language. Reading and speaking English are requirements to become a citizen.
Ernest Istook
#19. It taught me that Clinton's instinct to make this about your life as a citizen, rather than his as a human being, was the right answer to these things.
Paul Begala
#20. You can have a movie with hardly any cuts, or very few cuts, that is fascinating, you can't take your eyes away from it ... Look at some of the long takes in Citizen Kane.
Roger Ebert
#21. Ladies and gentlemen, it is not the job of government to be the national nanny. The average citizen can look after his or her own needs without assistance from somebody who works here in Washington.
Tom Clancy
#22. To kill a citizen of our own country is evil, but to kill a citizen of another country is 'good.'
Edgar Mitchell
#23. People that had the guts to put their loyalty to the Constitution ahead of their loyalty to their political party were citizen legislators.
Tom Coburn
#24. During my 8 years as chairman, I had the privilege to peer into the future to see dynamic citizen astronauts returning to and from the heavens which we can expect in the future.
Dana Rohrabacher
#25. To all general purposes we have uniformly been one people, each individual citizen everywhere enjoying the same national rights, privileges, and protection.
Alexander Hamilton
#26. You see it even in our educational systems, where the market model becomes central. It's a matter of just gaining a skill or gaining access to a job to live in some vanilla suburb, as opposed to becoming a critical citizen concerned with public interest and common good.
Cornel West
#27. The measure of your quality as a public person, as a citizen, is the gap between what you do and what you say.
Ramsey Clark
#28. We didn't even think about it, you know? I used to collect laser discs, and you'd have some college professor analyzing It's a Wonderful Life or Citizen Kane, and now it is pretty funny - the idea of commentary for a silly kid's movie, you know?
Dana Carvey
#29. No matter what name we give it or how we judge it, a candidate's character is central to political reporting because it is central to a citizen's decision in voting.
Roger Mudd
#30. Certain music, jazz in particular, has the ability to make you a better citizen of the world. It helps you expand your world view and gives you more confidence in your cultural achievements. Improvisational jazz teaches you about yourself while the swing in jazz teaches you how to work with others
Wynton Marsalis
#31. Anybody has a right to evade taxes if he can get away with it. No citizen has a moral obligation to assist in maintaining his government
J. P. Morgan
#32. Is 'Garden State' the next 'Citizen Kane'? Of course not. I'd like to think we aimed a little higher than that, frankly.
Zach Braff
#33. Every once in a while, you live long enough to get the respect that people didn't want to give while you were trying to become a senior citizen.
Gil Scott-Heron
#34. I deserve a fair trial, like every other American citizen. A large amount of ugly, malicious misinformation has been released to the media about me.
Michael Jackson
#35. It is a greater thing to be a good citizen than to be a good Republican or a good Democrat,
Gifford Pinchot
#36. I entered the health care debate in response to a statement in the United States press in summer 2009 which claimed the National Health Service in Great Britain would have killed me off, were I a British citizen. I felt compelled to make a statement to explain the error.
Stephen Hawking
#37. I'm not a politician by profession. I am a citizen who decided I had to be personally involved.
Ronald Reagan
#39. Of course, it is possible for any citizen with time to spare, and a canny eye, to work out what is actually going on, but for the many there is not time, and the network news is the only news even though it may not be news at all but only a series of flashing fictions ...
Gore Vidal
#40. The first duty of an American citizen, then, is that he shall work in politics.
Theodore Roosevelt
#41. So far removed are these practices from what the average American citizen encounters in his daily life that it takes a huge act of his imagination to believe that it is true;
Richard Wright
#42. It is chiefly upon the lay citizen, informed about science but not its practitioner, that the country must depend in determining the use to which science is put, in resolving the many public policy questions that scientific discoveries constantly force upon us.
David Lilienthal
#43. I would like to express the thoughts of a man who, having finally penetrated the partitions and ceilings of little countries, little coteries, little sects, rises above all these categories and finds himself a child and citizen of the Earth.
Pierre Teilhard De Chardin
#44. Who is the Forgotten Man? He is the clean, quiet, virtuous, domestic citizen, who pays his debts and his taxes and is never heard of out of his little circle.
William Graham Sumner
#45. De Tocqueville's thrust is that it's in the democratic citizen's nature to be like a leaf that doesn't believe in the tree it's part of.
David Foster Wallace
#46. You are not just a consumer. You are a citizen of this Earth and your responsibility is not private but public, not individual but social.
Rebecca Solnit
#47. It is on our bodies that the law must go to work, not only on our minds. Reason must govern in collusion with the senses it subdues, rather as an astute sovereign rules in a way that allows each citizen to feel that he is doing no more than obeying the diktats of his own desires.
Terry Eagleton
#49. I am not the President. Instead, I hold an even higher office, that of citizen of the United States.
Martin Sheen
#50. I'm a citizen in a democracy. To call me an activist would be redundant. It's not a spectator sport. If we all become non-participants, it no longer works.
Michael Moore
#51. I remember when we were making 'They Call It Pro Football,' which was our 'Citizen Kane.' The first line is 'It starts with a whistle and ends with a gun.'
Steve Sabol
#52. I'm the world heavyweight champion. I consider myself a citizen of the whole world.
George Foreman
#53. Politics should be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.
Lucille Ball
#55. It's perilous and foolhardy for the average citizen to remain ignorant about global warming, say, or ozone depletion, air pollution, toxic and radioactive wastes, acid rain, topsoil erosion, tropical deforestation, exponential population growth. Jobs and wages depend on science and technology.
Carl Sagan
#56. As a citizen, hopefully I'm humanist. As an artist, I'm free.
Patti Smith
#57. You can't kill an American Citizen without benefit of a trial."
"I can if you're on the list, traitor."
"LIST? What list? What the hell are you talking about?"
BLACK LIST, July 24
Brad Thor
#58. And 'Queer Eye' is fascinating. It has a pinch-me-I'm-dreaming quality. It's very bourgeois, of course, and much more about the liberation of the consumer than the liberation of the democratic citizen.
Tony Kushner
#59. It is no accident that wherever the State ha taken economic decision away from the citizen, it has deprived him of his other liberties as well.
Enoch Powell
#60. But I don't want anybody to say have the right to say well if you bloody Brits don't like it go home. And they have the right to say that if you haven't become a citizen.
Lynn Redgrave
#61. A political system seeking to function amongst ignorant, illiterate and barbaric people could have marvelous principles but could only succeed in being ignorant, illiterate and barbaric unless one addressed the people one by one and cured the ignorance, illiteracy and barbarism of each citizen.
L. Ron Hubbard
#62. I am convinced that in the upcoming chapter of the struggle, I can be more useful to the inevitable change that will soon come to Cuba, to Cuba's freedom, as a private citizen dedicated to helping the heroes within Cuba.
Lincoln Diaz-Balart
#63. The average citizen expresses pride in the American Bill of Rights and then seeks to protect his real estate by restrictive covenants.
Harry Allen Overstreet
#64. It amazes me to witness the masochism with which some journalists characterize their industry as a dying species. The future belongs to citizen journalism and blogs.
Mathias Dopfner
#65. Personal Responsibility of each citizen before the nation, is usually well defined in all developed nations.
Sunday Adelaja
#66. As a practical matter, every immigrant needs to master English to be a full participating citizen and to have full economic opportunity.
Richard Lugar
#67. Corruption is a cancer: a cancer that eats away at a citizen's faith in democracy, diminishes the instinct for innovation and creativity; already-tight national budgets, crowding out important national investments. It wastes the talent of entire generations. It scares away investments and jobs.
Joe Biden
#68. When I look back at the last decade, I think the following: There are some very wealthy people, but a lot of their incomes are from financial innovations that do not translate to gains for the average American citizen.
Tyler Cowen
#69. And let me tell you, you boys of America, that there is no higher inspiration to any man to be a good man, a good citizen, and a good son, brother, or father, than the knowledge that you come from honest blood.
John Sergeant Wise
#70. I'm sure that a U.S. citizen, if I try to sing in English, he can feel that I'm not really sincere, there is something wrong. And I'm sure that even in French, they could feel the sincerity more than in English.
Stromae
#71. As for being a voice in politics, I feel whether you are famous or not, busy or not, it's incumbent upon every citizen to participate in this government in any way we can.
Elayne Boosler
#72. No office in the land is more important than that of being a citizen.
Felix Frankfurter
#73. The true legacy of 9-11 cannot be found among political leaders of the day, but in the citizen soldiers and public safety personnel who answered that day with courage and selflessness.
Mike Pence
#74. I was fortunate enough to be an American citizen by birth and I have the birth certificate to prove it.
Raul Labrador
#75. The plum-colored night sky was shifting to pink to make room for the day, which looked as though it might turn out "glorious and whimsical," as the Key West Citizen had promised.
Lucy Burdette
#76. I am a citizen of the world, and I have met, in my time, with so many different sorts of virtue, that I am puzzled, in my old age, to say which is the right sort and which is the wrong.
Wilkie Collins
#77. The reason that a good citizen does not use such destructive means to become wealthier is that, if everyone did so, we would all become poorer from the mutual destructiveness.
Richard Stallman
#78. I'm a citizen of the world. I like it that way. The world's a wonderful. I just think that some people are pretty badly represented. But when you speak to the people themselves they're delightful. They all want so little.
Billy Connolly
#79. Every state's emblematic propaganda is worshiped by the consumer-citizen as a super-logo, a brand Juggernaut.
Bryant McGill
#80. He is a free and secure citizen of the world because he is on a chain that is long enough to allow him access to all parts of the earth, and yet not so long that he could be swept over the edge of it.
Franz Kafka
#81. Choosing education is a very good decision, not only good for the student, but also for our country. The United States was the first nation in history to recognize that public education for every citizen, regardless of class or station, was vital to its future ...
Mitt Romney
#82. Our country doesn't depend on the heroism of every citizen. But all of us should be worthy of the sacrifices made on our behalf.
John McCain
#83. While the principles of our Constitution give just latitude to inquiry, every citizen faithful to it will deem embodied expressions of discontent and open outrages of law and patriotism as dishonorable as they are injurious
Thomas Jefferson
#84. There was also a phrase for him: pick at random any citizen from Maycomb County and its environs, ask him what he thought of Atticus Finch, and the answer would most likely be, "I never had a better friend." Atticus
Harper Lee
#86. 'Senior Citizen' and 'Silver Surfer' are the new euphemisms. Unless you're a female presenter on TV, in which case you're ready for the knacker's yard at 35.
Terry Wogan
#87. Tonight - by taking this solemn oath - I am no longer a private citizen but the Mayor of the City of Chicago.
Jane Byrne
#88. I've been a law-abiding citizen ever since I grew up in the Bronx, New York.
Wesley Snipes
#89. I am a naturalized U.S. citizen, which means that, unlike native-born citizens, I had to prove to the U.S. government that I merited citizenship.
Bharati Mukherjee
#90. Every citizen or subject of another country, while domiciled here, is within the allegiance and the protection, and consequently subject to the jurisdiction, of the United States.
Horace Gray
#91. The virtue of the good man is necessarily the same as the virtue of the citizen of the perfect state.
Aristotle.
#92. As a citizen, you have an obligation to the countrys tax system, but you also have an obligation to yourself to know your rights under the law and possible tax deductions
and to claim every one of them.
Donald Alexander
#93. I'm not sure that the benefit - as a writer and as a citizen - that I would get from reading at least the front page of the Times every day or every other day would outweigh the depression.
Sharon Olds
#94. If there is one set of laws, one Constitution for every citizen, its protections hopefully applied equally to all, then why do the results seem to differ so radically? What do you call that? Look around - you're living in it.
Henry Rollins
#95. Political liberty in a citizen is that tranquillity of spirit which comes from the opinion each one has of his security, and in order for him to have this liberty the government must be such that one citizen cannot fear another citizen.
Baron De Montesquieu
#96. One must choose between making a man or a citizen, for one cannot make both at the same time.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
#97. I'm not a U.S. citizen. I mean, I'm an earth-izen. Borderline policies are crap to me.
Chuck D
#98. Being called a 'bad citizen' is a compliment to a novelist, at least to my mind. That's exactly what we ought to do.
Don DeLillo
#99. I truly believe that firearms in the hands of law abiding citizen's makes our families and our communities more safe, not less safe.
Mike Pence
#100. To live with unforgiveness is to become a captive cultured citizen whose taxation is that of demonically ticketed torment.
Tracey Bond
