Quotes About Citizenship

#1. No other country on earth could have provided such tremendous opportunities and we should never take the privilege of our citizenship for granted.

Jane D. Hull

#2. I have dual citizenship; it just so happens I live in America. I would like to go back to Wales. I'm obsessed with my childhood, and at least three times a week dream I am back there.

Anthony Hopkins

#3. There is something inherently wrong, something out of accord with the ideals of representative democracy, when one portion of our citizenship turns its activities to private gain amid defensive war while another is fighting, sacrificing, or dying for national preservation.

Warren G. Harding

#4. The current practice of extending U.S. citizenship to hundreds of thousands of 'anchor babies' must end because it creates a magnet for illegal immigration into our country. Now is the time to ensure that the laws in this country do not encourage law-breaking.

Steve King

#5. I am deeply grateful to the citizens of Sarajevo and the Sarajevo Canton assembly for bestowing upon me this incredible honor of citizenship. I am so proud to now be a part of such an extraordinary part of the world and fellow citizen to the people I deeply love and admire.

Angelina Jolie

#6. The German stamp on Wisconsin endures in the state's commitment to efficient agriculture, hard work, education, culture, and to good citizenship and political freedom - all of which were an integral part of the German immigrant's language.

Richard H. Zeitlin

#7. To me, terrorists should not be able to hide behind their passports and their citizenship, and that includes U.S. citizens, whether they are overseas or whether they are here in the United States. What we need to do is to apply the appropriate tool and the appropriate response.

John O. Brennan

#8. If I had to choose between baseball's Hall of Fame and first class citizenship for all of my people. I would say first-class citizenship.

Jackie Robinson

#9. We feel a pathway to citizenship would reward illegal activity, ... Amnesty encourages further illegal immigration.

Elaine Chao

#10. History is the key to citizenship.

Taylor Branch

#11. With my pen I have engraved warrants of citizenship in the most remote corners, for truly the world has been my home.

James A. Michener

#12. Capital in money form has no citizenship. It is fungible, an asset capable of moving from place to place in a nanosecond.

Eric Kierans

#13. Suffrage is a common right of citizenship. Women have the right of suffrage. Logically it cannot be escaped.

Victoria Woodhull

#14. Citizenship is what makes a republic - monarchies can get along without it.

Mark Twain

#15. There should be a pathway to citizenship - not a special pathway and not no pathway.

Jason Chaffetz

#16. In the midst of applying for American citizenship, of finally attempting to get my presidents in a row, I felt it incumbent upon myself to explore the national psyche in every way.

Hamish Bowles

#17. [There are] seven gifts God gives you when you commit your life to Christ: a new relationship, a new citizenship, a new family, a new purpose, a new power, a new destiny, and a new journey.

Billy Graham

#18. A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society.

Thomas Jefferson

#19. Belief in liberal freedom and democracy is always belief in it in a particular place, in a national home with histories that only those who are born in a place or who adopt its citizenship can hope to understand.

Michael Ignatieff

#20. I will argue until my last breath for a pathway to citizenship that is quick and efficient because I want to end this chapter. I want to end it ... But let me say, conversely, I am as committed as any Republican to ending illegal immigration as we know it ... They want to end it. So do I.

Luis Gutierrez

#21. The Angel (in Joshua) declared that he was born leader and indicated that he was in the army of the Lord. The Lord was the commander of that angel, and he is our commander still. We favor no human on either side of any argument.

Dennis Garvin

#22. When it comes to fighting for citizenship that many people take for granted, there isn't anyone I would not talk to. When it comes to immigration, there isn't any question I will not answer.

Jose Antonio Vargas

#23. Good government is no substitute for self-government.

Mahatma Gandhi

#24. I don't say women's rights - I say the constitutional principle of the equal citizenship stature of men and women.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

#25. Where do real conversations about citizenship occur? In our schools. Think about the things you learned in first grade. "My Country 'Tis of Thee," "I pledge allegiance to the flag," "America the Beautiful."

Henry Louis Gates

#26. I love the United States. I have applied for citizenship. I want to take the oath of allegiance on TV.

Craig Ferguson

#27. If every single Jew born anywhere in the world has the right to become an Israeli citizen, then all the Palestinians who were chucked out of Palestine by the Zionist Government should have the same right, very simple.

Tariq Ali

#28. Love requires that true education should be easily accessible to all and should be of use to every villager in this daily life. The emphasis laid on the principle of spending every minute of one's life usefully is the best education for citizenship.

Mahatma Gandhi

#29. Perfect freedom is as necessary to the health and vigor of commerce as it is to the health and vigor of citizenship.

Patrick Henry

#30. Have you ever watched someone become American? Last week, at a national citizenship conference I organize, thirty immigrants from 17 countries swore an oath and became citizens of the United States. It was a stirring experience for the hundreds of people in the room.

Eric Liu

#31. After four centuries of Spanish rule, Puerto Rico was ceded to the United States in 1898. Residents were granted U.S. citizenship in 1917, and the federal government has allowed Puerto Rico to exercise authority over its local affairs in a manner similar to the 50 states.

Pedro Pierluisi

#32. The social and industrial structure of America is founded upon an enlightened citizenship.

Bainbridge Colby

#33. I didn't flee a dictator or swim an ocean to be an American like some do. I just thought long and hard about it.

Craig Ferguson

#34. I see the sharp inequality between how Haitian and Cuban refugees are treated in Florida. Both groups come here because their lives are equally desperate. But on arrival, the Haitians are incarcerated, and some are immediately repatriated, whereas Cubans get to stay and are eligible for citizenship.

Edwidge Danticat

#35. Since the days of Greece and Rome, when the word 'citizen' was a title of honor, we have often seen more emphasis put on the rights of citizenship than on its responsibilities.

Robert Kennedy

#36. On August 26 the Assembly responded by conferring French citizenship upon Joseph Priestley, Jeremy Bentham, William Wilberforce, Anacharsis Cloots, Johann Pestalozzi, Thaddeus Kosciusko, Friedrich Schiller, George Washington, Thomas Paine, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton.

Will Durant

#37. ...many countries now allow dual citizenship-a status that Teddy Roosevelt once likened to polygamy.

Atossa Araxia Abrahamian

#38. A champion, he said, wins a World Series or an Olympic and is hoisted on the shoulders of teammates and fans. A hero carries the people on his shoulders. Champions live for the moment- heroes, like Jackie Robinson, transcend time.

Sharon Robinson

#39. As African-Americans, that's what's being played fast and loose with, our citizenship. When you have the Trayvon Martins and the Michael Browns being shot and killed, it's because, on a certain level, there is a kind of mutability in the understanding of citizenship around the black body.

Claudia Rankine

#40. [Rosa Louise] Parks used to say, "Everybody looks at me because I sat down once in Montgomery, but the real hero is a woman named Septima Clark."She created the Citizenship Schools [where civil-rights activists taught basic literacy and political education classes].

Marian Wright Edelman

#41. Families have a citizenship which is divine. The identity card they have is given to them by God. So that within the heart of the family, truth, goodness and beauty may truly grow.

Pope Francis

#42. What makes America special is that people come here, assimilate and become American with all of the rights and responsibilities citizenship bestows.

Zoe Lofgren

#43. I'm not a Communist. I'm an American. I'm a capitalist. I mean, I'm not a very good capitalist, myself. I'm not very good at it, but it's not that I'm not for capitalism. But people who believe in things like corporate citizenship, it's idiotic. I mean, it shows you're an idiot.

Fran Lebowitz

#44. Amend Constitution to remove aliens' birthright citizenship.

Ron Paul

#45. Do not expect me to fall in with the evil customs and ways of the world. I am in Rome, but I will not do as Rome does. I am an alien, a stranger, and a foreigner. My citizenship is in heaven.

Billy Graham

#46. We have in effect renounced our Worldly citizenship when we receive the King of Kings and the Prince of Peace, Lord of Lords, God of Heaven, Son of Righteousness and the Kingdom of Heaven into our hearts, and have made the Heavenly City our Home!

David Berg

#47. Defending birthright citizenship is about being on the right side of liberty. The 14th Amendment is a great legacy of the Republican Party.

Mark McKinnon

#48. The soldier is the Army. No army is better than its soldiers. The Soldier is also a citizen. In fact, the highest obligation and privilege of citizenship is that of bearing arms for one's country

George S. Patton Jr.

#49. Industrial capitalism brought representative democracy, but with a weak public mandate and inert citizenry. The digital age offers a new democracy based on public deliberation and active citizenship.

Don Tapscott

#50. The most significant civil rights problem is voting. Each citizen's right to vote is fundamental to all the other rights of citizenship and the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960 make it the responsibility of the Department of Justice to protect that right.

Robert Kennedy

#51. I consider writing an act of good citizenship.

Kurt Vonnegut

#52. Over a period of time, they [undocumented workers] can have a legalized status that allows them to live a life of dignity but not necessarily a path to citizenship, so as to not create incentives for future people that aspire to come to our country to do so illegally when they could come legally.

Jeb Bush

#53. After using a paint chart from a local DIY superstore to identify the skin tone of his penis as midnight chocolate, Miriam stayed down on one knee and offered him the citizenship he had always wanted and the middle-aged white woman he would grudgingly accept.

David F. Porteous

#54. Advocacy groups and voters are not wrong to push candidates to declare their position clearly on policy issues. That is good citizenship. Hard questions should be asked of every candidate, every politician. And those public servants should be prepared to answer, but in their own words.

Mark McKinnon

#55. Bohemia is nothing more than the little country in which you do not live. If you try to obtain citizenship in it, at once the court and retinue pack the royal archives and treasure and move away beyond the hills.

O. Henry

#56. Strengthening our identity is one way of reinforcing people's confidence and sense of citizenship and well-being.

David Blunkett

#57. Balancing the common good with the freedom and liberty to exercise that individuality has been and remains a challenge for those committed to democracy while understanding that the polis ensures our participation and therefore our citizenship.

David Blunkett

#58. I don't support an amnesty.(Cornyn) demands an ongoing focus on security and workplace enforcement before considering steps to grant legal status, let alone citizenship.

John Cornyn

#59. Modernity has been largely shaped for Jews by three momentous experiences: the acquisition of citizenship by individual Jews in secular nation-states, the destruction of one-third of Jewry in the Holocaust, and the founding of the State of Israel.

David Novak

#60. Freedom includes the right to say what others may object to and resent ... The essence of citizenship is to be tolerant of strong and provocative words.

John G. Diefenbaker

#61. I have no interest in Israeli citizenship ... Israel does not want me, nor do I want Israel.

Mordechai Vanunu

#62. I now have Croatian citizenship, but I only accepted it because Croatia allowed me to keep my Russian passport.

Garry Kasparov

#63. I'm interested in people who find themselves in places, either of their choosing or not, and who are forced to decide how best to live there. That feeling of both citizenship and exile, of always being an expatriate - with all the attendant problems and complications and delight.

Chang-rae Lee

#64. The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for giving to Mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.

George Washington

#65. With the full realization that, in order to earn for ourselves any place in the sun, we must with perseverance and self-discipline work collectively for the full first-class citizenship participation of Minorities everywhere, including ourselves.

Harry Hay

#66. Using the latest in science and technology to shatter today's economic paradigm of 'insatiable individuals competing for scarce resources,' Planetary Citizenship brings us full circle to the ancient wisdom of indigenous peoples and the sacredness of creation.

Rebecca Adamson

#67. We need a new kind of citizenship, so that we can see citizens as themselves earning the rank of patriot because of their involvement in their community affairs ... We as a society need to be encouraging people to focus not just on individual wants but on serving the larger community.

Paul Wellstone

#68. If there is no discipline, there is anarchy. Good citizenship demands attention to responsibilities as well as rights.

Joe Clark

#69. In a composite nation like ours, as before the law, there should be no rich, no poor, no high, no low, no white, no black, but common country, common citizenship, equal rights and a common destiny.

Frederick Douglass

#70. Pastors can lead the way in motivating the faithful to wise stewardship of their citizenship responsibilities. Without a healthy culture and civil society, limited government and ordered liberty will be impossible.

Edwin Meese

#71. Above all, I would teach him to tell the truth Truth-telling, I have found, is the key to responsible citizenship. The thousands of criminals I have seen in 40 years of law enforcement have had one thing in common: Every single one was a liar.

J. Edgar Hoover

#72. I think we should be pushing for amnesty and a path to citizenship for every undocumented person residing in the United States who has not committed a violent crime, with a special emphasis on keeping families together.

Conor Oberst

#73. My heavenly citizenship makes the whole world a foreign mission field.

Roland Smith

#74. I'm for the DREAM Act. It makes so much sense. Following the implementation of the DREAM Act, we'll have a case study we can point to where we can say that we provided a path to citizenship or legal involvement in the community for these young immigrants, and the sky didn't fall.

Beto O'Rourke

#75. Napoleon is great because he rose superior to the Revolution, suppressed its abuses, preserved all that was good in it - equality of citizenship and freedom of speech and of the press - and only for that reason did he obtain power.

Leo Tolstoy

#76. Motherhood is the second oldest profession in the world. It never questions age, height, religious preference, health, political affiliation, citizenship, morality, ethnic background, marital status, economic level, convenience, or previous experience.

Erma Bombeck

#77. I think what happened during the Great Depression was that African Americans understood that Republicans championed citizenship and voting rights but they became impatient for economic emancipation.

Rand Paul

#78. If somebody's going to earn citizenship, with whatever other hurdles are put in the way, at the end of the road they should be able to speak English, they should be able to read English, they should have some knowledge of American history,

Rudy Giuliani

#79. Business owners have made a strong case to me that they need guest workers. But none has suggested that these workers should be placed on a path to citizenship.

John Shadegg

#80. As a newcomer to America who learned to 'speak American' by watching movies, I firmly believe that to change the politics of immigration and citizenship, we must change culture - the way we portray undocumented people like me and our role in society.

Jose Antonio Vargas

#81. The corporations are powerful only because we have allowed them to be. In theory, it is we, not they, who mandate the state. But we have neglected our duty of citizenship, and they have taken advantage of our neglect to seize the reins of government.

George Monbiot

#82. I left Egypt in 1969 for graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania. I have been on the faculty at Caltech for 37 years and carried dual citizenship for 31. But my commitment to the country of my birth never wavered.

Ahmed Zewail

#83. We started a movement ... to build character, citizenship and confidence in young people.

Andrew Shue

#84. Jeb Bush is getting his presidential campaign in gear. Last week he said he supports a path to citizenship for immigrants. He said, 'I believe in an America where hard work and dedication can lead to any job that your brother and dad once had.'

Conan O'Brien

#85. You must understand the environment in Pakistan. This has become a moneymaking concern. A lot of people say if you want to go abroad and get a visa for Canada or citizenship and be a millionaire, get yourself raped.

Pervez Musharraf

#86. Yes, Europe needs to be more welcoming, but that's only half of it. Muslims need to embrace the obligations of European residence and citizenship.

David Ignatius

#87. Along with voting, jury duty, and paying taxes, goofing off is one of the central obligations of American citizenship.

Sarah Vowell

#88. I am asking the state of Israel to revoke my citizenship. This wish for revocation of citizenship is neither new nor recent. Now, however, it is supported by the new Revocation of Citizenship Law.

Mordechai Vanunu

#89. As long as I live, I will never forget that day 21 years ago when I raised my hand and took the oath of citizenship. Do you know how proud I was? I was so proud that I walked around with an American flag around my shoulders all day long.

Arnold Schwarzenegger

#90. Applied good taste is a mark of good citizenship. Ugliness is a from of anarchy.. ugly cities, ugly advertising, ugly lives produce bad citizens.

Lester Beall

#91. Citizenship is the right to have rights.

Earl Warren

#92. Vigilantes who executed some of the most vicious and ignoble acts of lawless brutality in U.S. history nevertheless considered those very acts to be the work of citizenship and in many cases elicited wide popular approval.

Linda Gordon

#93. Again, something that's very strange and odd, you will find sometimes that immigrants that have been here for many years and already have their citizenship might be the ones against additional immigration. We've seen that also.

Philippe Falardeau

#94. He had 'deep concerns' with the pathway to citizenship for the nation's 11 million illegal immigrants under consideration by the group, calling it 'profoundly unfair' to legal immigrants.

Ted Cruz

#95. And the passiveness, you know, the apathy, well, that's not responsible citizenship. When I'm asked, why am I an activist, I say, well that's the rent that I pay for living on this planet, okay?

Ray McGovern

#96. If we accept the logic of the Declaration, reverence for God is not just a matter of religious faith, it is the foundation of justice and citizenship in our republic.

Alan Keyes

#97. I'm not saying to you that every element of segregation and discrimination and second-class citizenship has changed. But in the political sense, the world has changed. People now who want to vote can vote.

John Doar

#98. For me, equal citizenship for Muslims, Christians, Jews, Atheists and Agnostics is an indisputable principle. Whoever you are, you should get the same rights with no discussion and no compromise.

Tariq Ramadan

#99. I am proud of my husband, Marcus, the love of my life, and his Swiss heritage. Even though I have been a dual citizen since I was married in 1978, I have never exercised any rights of that citizenship.

Michele Bachmann

#100. And we'll build a path to citizenship for millions of immigrants who are already contributing to our economy!

Hillary Clinton