Quotes On U.s. Citizenship

#1. 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

#2. We watched the U.S. citizenship immigration services web site in March. They had six million, two hundred thousand hits, and two million people downloaded applications for citizenship. So what we're doing is attempting to help people in that process.

Luis Gutierrez

#3. Even if there's no way to stop U.S. corporations from shedding their U.S. identities and becoming foreign corporations, there's no reason they should retain the privileges of U.S. citizenship.

Robert Reich

#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'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

#6. 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

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

Zoe Lofgren

#8. 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

#9. [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

#10. 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

#11. 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

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

Atossa Araxia Abrahamian

#13. 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

#14. 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

#15. 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

#16. 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

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

Bainbridge Colby

#18. 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

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

Ron Paul

#20. 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

#21. 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

#22. 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

#23. 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.

#24. 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

#25. Over the years, dozens of American companies have filed papers to trade in their U.S. corporate citizenship for citizenship in tax haven countries like Bermuda.

Richard Neal

#26. I was born in the U.S. Why should anyone who has an unfavorable view of the American government renounce his or her citizenship? Why don't its supporters relinquish their citizenship first?

Mohammad Marandi

#27. The U.S. immigration system is the most generous in the world, providing each year more green cards for legal permanent residence with a clear path to full citizenship than all the rest of the nations of the world combined.

Jan C. Ting

#28. Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letter, U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, there is no power on earth that can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship.

Frederick Douglass

#29. Birth on U.S. territory has never been an absolute claim to citizenship.

Phyllis Schlafly

#30. Told reporters Wednesday he can support a pathway to citizenship for some of the 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. and that he actually prefers it to a plan that would create a second-class of citizens through alternative programs.

Darrell Issa

#31. There's no issue whatsoever. Ted Cruz has dual citizenship, because his mom is a U.S. citizen, so he gets naturalized citizen as a result of that.

Donald Trump

#32. I love my country. And I would have to renounce my Spanish citizenship to become a U.S. Citizen.

Antonio Banderas

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

Jason Chaffetz

#34. 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

#35. 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

#36. 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

#37. 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

#38. 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

#39. 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

#40. 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

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

Elaine Chao

#42. History is the key to citizenship.

Taylor Branch

#43. 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

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

Eric Kierans

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

Victoria Woodhull

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

Mark Twain

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

Patrick Henry

#48. 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

#49. [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

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

Thomas Jefferson

#51. 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

#52. 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

#53. 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

#54. 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

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

Mahatma Gandhi

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

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

#57. 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

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

Craig Ferguson

#59. 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

#60. 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