Top 100 Quotes About Civil Society
#1. All depend upon the engagement of as many people as possible on all levels, from civil society to national leaders, to advocate for the kind of national and international commitments, legislation, and public/ private partnerships that can make the difference.
Queen Noor Of Jordan
#2. Changes to parliamentary procedure won't transform the lives of the people whom I represent. Decentralising, devolving decision-making and renewing civil society will.
David Blunkett
#3. But who is to decide who truly fears the Lord? The magistrate has no power to enforce religious demands. The laws of the First Table of the Ten Commandments are not regulations for a civil society or a political order. They belong to the realm of religion, not politics.
Roger Williams
#4. So often, we leave the selfless side of ourselves for nights and weekends, for our charity work. It is our duty to inject that into our day-to-day business, into the work that we do, to improve corporations, to improve civil society, and to improve government.
Leila Janah
#5. Stories can educate, elevate, comfort, and afflict those who are too comfortable. They can create community. They can also drive people apart, justify unspeakable crimes, and destroy the most basic concepts of civil society. You
Jonathan Shapiro
#6. Whereas in Western countries the constitution merely had to guarantee the rights of a per-existing civil society and culture, in Russia it also had to create these. It had to educate society - and the state itself - into the values and ideas of liberal constitutionalism.
Orlando Figes
#7. I was in civil society long before I was ever in politics or my husband was ever even elected president.
Hillary Clinton
#8. You can't be halfhearted in a revolution. Values that serve well in a civil society don't work in a state of nature.
Glenn Reynolds
#9. A new sense of shared international responsibility is unmistakable in the voices of the United Nations and its agencies, and in the civil society of thousands of supra-national NGOs.
John Charles Polanyi
#10. In an age where community involvement and partnerships with civil society are increasingly being recognized as indispensable, there is clearly a growing potential for cooperative development and renewal worldwide.
Kofi Annan
#11. If we want to understand the distinctive constitution of Europe, we must go back to its religious foundations. For the moral beliefs which Christianity fostered still underpin civil society in Europe, the institutions that surround us.
Larry Siedentop
#12. Mexico established a unique three-part governing system shared by the government, the information commission and civil society organisations.
Mo Ibrahim
#13. In emerging democracies like Russia, in authoritarian states like Iran or even Yugoslavia, journalists play a vital role in civil society. In fact, they form the very basis of those new democracies and civil societies.
Christiane Amanpour
#14. I have for some time urged that a nuclear abolition summit to mark the effective end of the nuclear era be convened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the 70th anniversary of the bombings of those cities, with the participation of national leaders and representatives of global civil society.
Daisaku Ikeda
#15. I shall support the law, for the law gentlemen, is the firm and solid basis of civil society, the guardian of liberty, the protection of the innocent, the terror of the guilty, and the scourge of the wicked.
Charles Lawrence
#16. The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying 'this is mine', and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
#17. A healthy society rests on three pillars: business, government and civil society, or non-profits. Each has a distinct and important role to play, and all three need to work together synergistically to create the most value for society.
John Mackey
#18. 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
#19. Becoming a modern society is about industrialization, urbanization, and rising levels of literacy, education, and wealth. The qualities that make a society Western, in contrast, are special: the classical legacy, Christianity, the separation of church and state, the rule of law, civil society.
Samuel P. Huntington
#20. A healthy civil society and vibrant republic ultimately cannot survive without a properly functioning constitutional system.
Mark R. Levin
#21. It is time for the world, the hemisphere and the region to make sure that relevant institutions of civil society and relevant laws are embedded in the mechanisms of governance.
Baldwin Spencer
#22. I think that for anybody who has worked in the civil society, government bureaucracy moves very very slowly.
Wangari Maathai
#23. We resign to civil society our natural rights of self-defence only on condition that the ordinances of law should protect us.
Walter Scott
#24. Society cannot exist without law. Law is the bond of society: that which makes it, that which preserves it and keeps it together. It is, in fact, the essence of civil society.
Joseph P. Bradley
#25. Stability in government is essential to national character and to the advantages annexed to it, as well as to that repose and confidence in the minds of the people, which are among the chief blessings of civil society.
James Madison
#26. The greatest failure is that although we have created institutions, we have not created a civil society.
Paddy Ashdown
#27. You need a civil society ... Bushfires can achieve the change from society to community. Bushfires can. Floods can. Ghastly crimes and disasters can. Places can change ... but it takes blood, sweat and tears.
Bob Maguire
#28. Respect for human rights requires transparent and accountable institutions and governance as well as the effective participation of all individuals and civil society, who are an essential part of realizing social and people-centred sustainable development.
Alfred-Maurice De Zayas
#29. At issue is not whether the global economy will pass away. It is passing away. Rising populations and debt combined with depletion of freshwater sources and fossil fuel make the status quo untenable. The only question is whether civil society will survive the transition.
Daniel Suarez
#30. We will not let governments off the hook. We will look to civil society to help us, to pin governments, to what they have committed to here. And we will report on it.
Mary Robinson
#31. Civil Society is a cluster of institutions and associations strong enough to prevent tyranny, but which are, none the less, entered and left freely, rather than imposed by birth or sustained by awesome ritual. You can join the Labour Party without slaughtering a sheep ...
Ernest Gellner
#32. In a democracy, it is the people who are sovereign. Therefore, with regard to the promotion of democracy at the local, country and regional levels, civil society must have a stronger voice in all political processes.
Alfred-Maurice De Zayas
#33. I have no argument with those who see in organized religion a template or an imperative to live life according to a prescribed set of beliefs. Just give others the room, within the laws of civil society, to believe or not believe whatever they like.
Michael J. Fox
#34. Where there is an absence of international political leadership, civil society should step in to fill the gap, providing the energy and vision needed to move the world in a new and better direction.
Daisaku Ikeda
#35. The progress of manufactures and commerce insensibly collects a large multitude within the walls of a city: but these citizens are no longer soldiers; and the arts which adorn and improve the state of civil society, corrupt the habits of the military life.
Edward Gibbon
#36. Nazism did not destroy civil society. Bolshevism did destroy civil society. This is one of the reasons for the "miracle" of German recovery, and for the continuation of Russian vulnerability and failure. Stalin did not destroy civil society. Lenin destroyed civil society.
Martin Amis
#37. Places matter. Their rules, their scale, their design include or exclude civil society, pedestrianism, equality, diversity (economic and otherwise), understanding of where water comes from and garbage goes, consumption or conservation. They map our lives.
Rebecca Solnit
#38. Mobile phones play a really wonderful role in enabling civil society. As well as empowering people economically and socially, they are a wonderful political tool.
Mo Ibrahim
#39. Civil society has not lost the possibility to influence the government and force them to change their policy. That is why we believe in your voice and your help.
Lidia Yusupova
#40. The shift from government (state power on its own) to governance (a broader configuration of state and key elements in civil society) has therefore been marked under neoliberalism.11 In this respect the practices of the neoliberal and developmental state broadly converge.
David Harvey
#41. If there is no willingness to use force to defend civil society, it's civil society that goes away, not force.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden
#42. Obesity is a societal issue. We have to come together with government, business, civil society, and NGOs to create solutions for this.
Muhtar Kent
#43. You know, when you get to the New World and you develop your three branches of government and you have a civil society, you can just jettison all the barbarism I recommended in the first books.
Sam Harris
#44. So virtuous are the programs said to be - pensions for the elderly, compensation for the unemployed, medicine for the sick, and assistance for the disabled - few dare ring the alarm of looming economic catastrophe that threatens to destabilize the civil society.
Mark Levin
#45. Building sustainable cities - and a sustainable future - will need open dialogue among all branches of national, regional and local government. And it will need the engagement of all stakeholders - including the private sector and civil society, and especially the poor and marginalized.
Ban Ki-moon
#46. It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage ... Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the Universe ...
James Madison
#47. Few enjoyments are given from the open and liberal hand of nature; but by art, labor and industry we can extract them in great abundance. Hence, the ideas of property become necessary in all civil society.
David Hume
#48. When people get out of jail, it is not easy for them to find a job. It is not easy for them to return to civil society.
Bernie Sanders
#49. Democracy is disruptive ... there is no right in a democratic civil society to be free of disruption.
Naomi Wolf
#50. As a vibrant force in civil society, women continue to press for their rights, equal participation in decision-making, and the upholding of the principles of the revolution by the highest levels of leadership in Egypt.
Michelle Bachelet
#51. Business, labor and civil society organizations have skills and resources that are vital in helping to build a more robust global community.
Kofi Annan
#52. At the heart of these challenges lies the question of how the institutions of the European Union make laws, the types of laws they pass and the effectiveness with which those laws are implemented on civil society and the economy.
John Hutton
#53. If civil society has nobody who protects the law, then what kind of society is that?
Ai Weiwei
#54. Security against foreign danger is one of the primitive objects of civil society. It is an avowed and essential object of the American Union.
James Madison
#55. If you create enough space in Egypt, civil society will revive itself, and then will you have all of these secular forces, liberals, nationalists and others, compete with the Islamists. And then you will see the Islamists reduced to their size.
Hisham Melhem
#56. A variant of the NIT puts it within our power to end poverty, provide for comfortable retirement and medical care for everyone, and - as a bonus that is probably more important than any of the immediate effects - revitalize American civil society.
Charles Murray
#57. Standards of conduct appropriate to civil society or the workings of a democracy cannot be purely and simply applied to the Church.
Pope Benedict XVI
#58. A just laicism allows religious freedom. The state does not impose religion but rather gives space to religions with a responsibility toward civil society, and therefore it allows these religions to be factors in building up society.
Pope Benedict XVI
#59. Activist government overreach and ongoing economic stagnation have shown us why Washington should not try to displace what is best left to civil society.
Paul Ryan
#60. I'm a big fan of the vigor of civil society, political engagement, and public life in many parts of Latin America.
Rebecca Solnit
#61. I shall work with Congress, civil society groups and local government executives who are convinced that charter changes are needed to enable the country to surmount the unprecedented challenges of the 21st century.
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo
#62. We need a mobilized and active civil society using its purchasing power to demand sustainable products and practices. It is also essential that governments commit to the future, creating fiscal and regulatory conditions for sustainable policies to thrive.
Guilherme Leal
#63. Civil liberty is only natural liberty, modified and secured by the sanctions of civil society.
Alexander Hamilton
#64. [T]he task of abolishing the essence of Jewry is in truth the task of abolishing Jewry in civil society, abolishing the inhumanity of today's practice of life, the summit of which is the money system.
Karl Marx
#65. As marriage and the family institution constitute the foundation and chief cornerstone of civil society, it is of the greatest moment that the marriage-tie should never be dissolved save for the most urgent reason. I cannot assent, however, to the doctrine that it should never be dissolved at all.
Joseph P. Bradley
#66. When carrying a concealed weapon for self-defense
is understood NOT as a failure of civil society,
to be mourned,
but as an act of citizenship,
to be vaunted,
there is little civilian life left.
Jill Lepore
#67. Violence is the power of the state; imagination and non-violence the power of civil society.
Rebecca Solnit
#68. The greatest problem for the human species, the solution of which nature compels him to seek, is that of attaining a civil society which can administer justice universally.
Immanuel Kant
#69. If we have isolated individuals able to inflict enormous harm, imagine what a single lunatic can do with a nuclear weapon. I think the whole base of civil society is at risk.
Joshua Lederberg
#70. If we are going to realise our ambition of ending the harmful practices of FGM and forced marriage, the role of young people in pushing for change is crucial. We also need to ensure that everyone, from government to civil society, is playing their part.
Theresa May
#71. In the process of helping some (perhaps most) people to more utility and justice, the state imposes on civil society a system of interdictions and commands.
Anthony De Jasay
#72. For achieving good governance political will is necessary. Good governance is a political process. Though role of civil society is critical, without political will and political process, sustainable good governance cannot be achieved.
Narendra Modi
#73. Providing all Latin-American children with the education and early childhood development that they need is in the best interest of all, so it has to be a priority for all of us, not only the government and civil society, but also the business sector.
Shakira
#74. Rule of law is the most important element in any civil society.
Mo Ibrahim
#76. Financial institutions, the corporate world and civil society - all must uphold high standards of probity in their working. Only a genuine partnership between the Government and its people can bring about positive change to create a just society.
Pratibha Patil
#77. A liberal education is at the heart of a civil society, and at the heart of a liberal education is the act of teaching.
A. Bartlett Giamatti
#78. The object of civil society is justice, not truth, virtue, wealth, knowledge, glory or power. Justice is followed by equality and liberty.
John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
#79. Religion is the basis of civil society, and the source of all good and of all comfort.
Edmund Burke
#80. If we are to make poverty history, we must have the active participation of States, civil society and the private sector, as well as individual volunteers.
Kofi Annan
#81. I will work in partnership with the Government, all political parties, and civil society to safeguard and advance the future of all Singaporeans.
Tony Tan
#82. I've come to realize that protecting freedom of choice in our everyday lives is essential to maintaining a healthy civil society.
George McGovern
#83. It's clear that it is in the best interest of business to be part of the conservation, along with governments and civil society.
Richard Branson
#84. I believe in a civil society we should do as much as possible not to have firearms in any guise, but obviously they are a necessary function of policing.
David Collenette
#85. I believe that Canada cannot, indeed, that Canada must not survive by force. The country will only remain united - it should only remain united - if its citizens want to live together in one civil society.
Pierre Trudeau
#86. No form of theocracy, whether it's manifested in a violent or non-violent form, is ever good for civilisation, and we have to challenge it in civil society as well as we would challenge Christian-based theocracy, or any other form of bigotry.
Maajid Nawaz
#87. I'm not happy, frankly. Because I think in a civil society we don't need firearms.
David Collenette
#88. Similarly, gender-equality, supremacy of law, political participation, civil society, and transparency are among the indispensable elements that are the imperatives of democratization.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan
#89. The only salvation of the world today ... is the rapid dissemination of the basic values of the West, that is, the ideas of democracy, human rights, the civil society, and the free market.
Vaclav Havel
#90. Atheists in our midst are proof that all consciences can be accommodated here, even those that have no ground for holding that conscience is sacred, inalienable, and prior to civil society.
Michael Novak
#91. The Conservative sees in the free market the harmony of interests and rules of cooperation that also underlie the civil society.
Mark Levin
#92. Sometimes I feel frustration at the bureaucracy for not moving fast enough to deliver in the way that I would prefer. But that is probably because I have worked for many years in the civil society, which tends to move much faster than government.
Wangari Maathai
#93. No fundamental social change occurs merely because government acts. It's because civil society, the conscience of a country, begins to rise up and demand - demand - demand change.
Joe Biden
#94. Pluralist societies are not accidents of history. They are a product of enlightened education and continuous investment by governments and all of civil society in recognizing and celebrating the diversity of the world's peoples.
Aga Khan IV
#95. After the ignominious collapse of the Copenhagen global climate change summit in 2009, Bolivia organised a People's Summit with 35,000 participants from 140 countries - not just representatives of governments, but also civil society and activists.
Noam Chomsky
#96. We need a new Latin American policy that is bold - different. We need to focus on building civil society, focus on the lack of infrastructure. We need look at ways to foster economic opportunity. There needs to be a more comprehensive economic vision in the region.
Mel Martinez
#97. Civil society must be strengthened to help raise awareness among people living with HIV, and those at risk, of their rights, and to ensure they have access to legal services and redress through the courts.
Shereen El Feki
#98. The sceptics, a kind of nomads, despising all settled culture of the land, broke up from time to time all civil society. Fortunately their number was small, and they could not prevent the old settlers from returning to cultivate the ground afresh, though without any fixed plan or agreement.
Immanuel Kant
#99. The first man, who, after enclosing a piece of ground, took it into his head to say, "This is mine," and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
#100. One's politics are part of one even when one is writing. But if I want to say anything about the state of civil society, I will write an essay. The responsibilities you feel as a novelist are literary ones, I think, not civic ones. And I think politicians are interesting to write about.
Thomas Mallon
